


Unbreakable

by Xero_Sky



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: AU, Adult Consensual Incest, Angst, Angst and Humor, Animal Death, Australian wildlife, Chanceigh, Eventual Smut, Everybody Lives, Ghost Drifting, M/M, Major Character Injury, Not Max, Pre-Knifehead, Sibling Incest, Threesome - M/M/M, What kind of monster do you think I am?, improbable romance, murdered timeline
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-08-28
Updated: 2015-08-10
Packaged: 2018-02-15 04:45:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 30,604
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2216304
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Xero_Sky/pseuds/Xero_Sky
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Becket brothers' future as a jaeger pilot team falls apart before they even see Gypsy Danger.</p><p>Now they'll both have to find a new life, and there's still a war on that they can't lose. Raleigh has to take on a new co-pilot, Yancy will have to adapt to losing the only future he really wanted, and the drift stubbornly refuses to let any of them go.  There's still years to go before anyone thinks Knifehead is a good codename for a kaiju, and none of them have ever been any good at backing down from a fight.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. In Which Only the Dead Have Seen the End of War

**Author's Note:**

> (I AM NOT KIDDING ABOUT THE MURDERED TIMELINE PART. It's an AU, though, so try to roll with it.) This is primarily a threesome fic, with minor pairings among the three of them.

He actually meets Chuck Hansen for the first time in the showers. 

 

There’s no reason for him to realize that this is going to change his life. Instead, he’s tired and his muscles ache and the last thing he needs to deal with just then is the Hansen kid. 

 

It’s not like he has much choice, though. 

 

Raleigh Becket doesn’t have much choice about anything at all these days.

 

Two months ago, he didn’t mind it so much, when he was half of the hottest jaeger team out of the Academy, just waiting for their turn, for their jaeger to come off the line. The Becket brothers’ neural handshake scores had been through the roof. They were on the edge of being rock stars.

 

Then it was all over.

 

After everything they’d been through, after all their struggles to get to the Academy and all the hard work they’d done so far, Yancy had had a heart attack during a drift in the new Mark 3 trainer. It hadn’t been catastrophic, but the stress his body had been under had made everything worse. The brief interruption of blood flow to his brain had caused a watershed stroke, and he’d gone from rigid with pain to hanging loosely from the rigging, all his strings cut. Raleigh had only had a flash of the pain of the pain in his chest; it was the sudden screaming static across their drift that had left him bleeding from the eyes and vomiting, unable to get free or break Yancy out of it.

 

Maybe one out of 20 pilots suffered some kind of neurocerebral incident in training, the doctors had told them. Somehow that wasn’t much comfort. Yancy had been left with aphasia and limited control of one arm and hand, and even though his prognosis was excellent, his career as a jaeger pilot was over. He can’t risk that kind of neural load again, or that particular brand of stress. There’s no telling what might happen, or when. He’d be a liability in combat now, a danger to himself and to Raleigh.

 

Yancy’s been out of the hospital for two weeks now, but he has nothing to do except spend his days in physical therapy and wait to find out what the hell he’s supposed to do with his life now. Yancy hasn’t felt so helpless and lost since the morning their father abandoned them. Even then, though, he’d had Raleigh to look after, to center himself on, to live for. Not this time, not exactly.

 

Raleigh was out of the hospital in three days, and most of that was spent confirming he hadn’t taken any permanent damage himself. He’s still got a future as a jaeger pilot, and even though he doesn’t really want it without Yancy, he can’t escape it now. He’s too valuable a commodity now. 

 

Raleigh’s been given a new date to begin compatibility testing, and Yancy cannot quite hide his bitterness. 

 

Raleigh has started fleeing his brother’s shitty temper by working himself to exhaustion in the Kwoon every evening. He understands, really, he does, but Yancy’s dealing with migraines and nausea on top of crushing disappointment, and he takes it out on Raleigh without ever realizing it.

 

Raleigh knows his brother, and knows that Yancy will adapt once he’s off the medications and has had a chance to deal with things. The PPDC has made it clear that they still want Yancy; turning him into a Ranger was a huge investment, and he’s recovering so well that they don’t see any reason to discharge him. There’s even precedent for keeping disqualified Rangers on as LOCCENT crew or Academy staff. Yancy just needs to figure it out. 

 

Raleigh hasn’t allowed himself for a second to think that Yancy might leave him. It’ll be okay again. After all, they’ve been through worse than this. Even though this is pretty fucking bad.

 

Yancy will find a new direction. It just won’t be quite the same as Raleigh’s. Still, they’ve never really been apart, and the fear of it is looming over them.

 

Last night, like every night now, he woke up in the darkness and was unable to fall asleep again until he heard the sound of Yancy still breathing. Like every night, he swore to himself that wasn’t what he was doing.

 

*******

 

Raleigh’s completely worn out now as he stands under the hot water, his eyes shut. He’s never really been comfortable with the open-bay showers here, but at the moment he’s too damned tired to do his usual speed shower: soap up, rinse off, and spend 30 seconds dreaming of getting out of cadet berthing so he can get a room with a goddamn private bathroom attached to it. Right now he’s too tired to give a shit, and if there was a way to fall asleep like this, under an endless stream of warm water, he’d be all over that.

 

He doesn’t have any duties at the moment except getting ready for compatibility testing (again), spending time going over the Mark III baseline specs, and taking care of Yancy, yet his days still manage to be grueling. It’ll be a blessing when he hits his bed tonight, but right now it just sucks.

 

Anxiety is eating at him. In three days he’s gonna be back in the Kwoon with the rest of the candidates, looking for a new partner he doesn’t really want, and his head still echoes with static sometimes from the violent disconnection with Yancy. The docs say otherwise, but Raleigh kinda doubts he’s drift compatible with anyone at all now. He’s too torn to even decide if he wants to be; he still dreams of being a pilot, but he feels like shit for wanting it now that he can’t do it with Yancy.

 

Fuck.

 

“Oi, you gonna be in there all day?”

 

The voice is young, utterly self-assured, and full of irritation, and when he blinks the water out of his eyes, he’s really not surprised to find Chuck Hansen there outside the shower stall, waiting with a towel over his shoulder and his shower kit in one hand.

 

He may not have met him before, but he’s certainly heard of the kid, and seen him around. He’s Herc Hansen’s son and Scott Hansen’s nephew, and cockiness seems to run in that family. Damned good pilots, though. Chuck’s younger then Raleigh, but he was only one class behind the Beckets. He’s only 16 or 17, but he’s got one hell of a reputation already, even if he’s only going into compatibility trials in the next round. 

 

Same time as Raleigh, actually. Huh.

 

Hansen’s staring right at him, the way naked strangers don’t usually do, in Raleigh’s limited experience, and he wonders for a second if the kid is checking him out. Then he gets what’s really going on. Raleigh’s got one of the few actual shower stalls, and he’s not really sure how long he’s been in there. Definitely long enough to piss off the junior Hansen, though. Even if the stalls don’t actually have anything like doors, they’re still everybody’s first choice.

 

“Yeah, gimme a second,” he mumbles, and makes sure he’s rinsed off completely. 

 

Hansen’s still there waiting when he’s done, arms crossed, staking out the stall like it’s his territory. If the kid has an ounce of modesty or any ability to be embarrassed, there’s no telling it from the way he’s watching Raleigh, all impatience.

 

And he’s not really a kid, is he? He’s almost as tall as Raleigh, and he’s putting on muscle. 

 

Before Raleigh can chase that particular thought an inch further, he steps out of the stall, grabbing his own towel and kit off the shelf. Hansen doesn’t say a thing, just takes his place, turning his back on him.

 

Raleigh thinks it’ll take about ten seconds to prove the two of them incompatible.

 

*******

 

They stop the fight after twenty minutes. It took about 30 seconds before they were completely in sync, and after that, it was like watching a training video of what a compatibility match should look like. By the time they shake it off, the ruling has already been made.

 

Raleigh Becket and Chuck Hansen are drift compatible. It’s one of the strongest scores anyone’s seen in a long time.

 

Raleigh feels like a goddamned traitor.

 

He’s not allowed to focus on that for long, though. The Hansen brothers are there to watch, and when Raleigh and Chuck walk off the mat, both of them more than a little stunned, Herc and Scott gather them right up. It’s a time to celebrate, yeah? Tomorrow the two of them will drift together for the first time in the sims, and completing your first drift with your new co-pilot completely hung over is practically an Australian tradition, Scott tells Raleigh.

 

Raleigh looks around for Yancy, hoping, but he’s not there. He couldn’t come to see Raleigh matched up with somebody else, Raleigh knows, but it still bites deep. He wants to go find him, to promise he’ll never leave him behind, but he doesn’t know if Yancy will believe him.

 

And that thought hurts even more.

 

After all the misery of the last few months, he wishes they could be happy again, even for a moment, even over something like this.

 

Chuck interrupts his thoughts by complaining loudly about being the only Hansen who has to be paired up with a seppo, although he’s grinning all the time. When Herc explains what the hell that means, Raleigh feels obligated to knock the little shit on his ass, which he promptly does, sweeping his feet out from under him. Laughing, Chuck retaliates, and soon they’re both down, wrestling for… domination? Raleigh doesn’t know, and after a few moments he doesn’t care much either, because for better or worse, Chuck’s moods will prove to always be infectious. It’s hard not laugh with him now, which brings its own guilt.

 

As it turns out, though, the elder Hansens have an agenda for this evening, and Raleigh finds that he’s definitely lost control of his own fate for the next few hours. It’s horribly easy to let go, just for once.

 

 

*******

 

When he makes it back to their room that night, Yancy is asleep, bundled up on the bottom bunk. He sleeps there now because sometimes the meds make him puke, and Raleigh was afraid he’d fall trying to scramble out of bed in the middle of the night. His balance had been affected along with the rest, and between that and the drugs, Yancy’s still a little wobbly right now.

 

The younger brother stops, listening as always for the sound of Yancy’s breathing. It seems to take forever as he hovers there in silence, holding his own breath. When he finally hears the sound he’s been waiting for, he starts to climb up top, back into the bunk that still doesn’t seem like it should be his. He only gets one foot off the floor before freezing in place, struck by the realization of what he’s done. 

 

He left Yancy here alone, after he was paired up with another fucking co-pilot, and then went out and _celebrated_. Yancy knew what today was, and Raleigh didn’t even have the guts to tell him face to face. After a few drinks, he hadn’t even thought about it, if he’s honest. He was so desperate to find a little joy in his life that he’d left Yancy here _alone_.

 

Panic hits him. He can’t lose Yancy. No matter what else happens, no matter if the world actually does fucking end. He can’t. He doesn’t even think he’d survive it.

 

It may be the buzz he’s got going from trying to keep up with the Hansens, but Raleigh doesn’t hesitate. He pulls an extra blanket down and drapes it over his brother, and then he strips down to his shirt and briefs before slipping under the covers with him. They lay back to back, and it’s awkward in the cramped bunk, but Raleigh’s determined, contorting himself so that they both fit. Even without touching, it’s so much better than being alone.

 

Even though he wants to cry, like he hasn’t done since he was a kid. Since before he and Yancy were left with nothing but each other. He can’t do that, though. He has to be stronger than that, for both of them. Has to.

 

When, a few minutes later, Yancy rolls over and spoons himself up against Raleigh’s back, throwing his arm across his little brother’s chest and pulling them close, Raleigh pretends to be asleep. He thinks that maybe Yancy’s pretending now too, and in the warming darkness, it feels like a gift, or maybe a benediction. They are quiet together for a long time. 

 

When he does finally begin to drift off, comforted more than he could ever say by his brother’s closeness and the trusting silence between them, Raleigh feels something he hasn’t since their final drift ended in disaster.

 

He thinks that, maybe, it might be hope. 

 

He falls asleep hazily wondering if it’s his or Yancy’s, and knowing that it doesn’t really matter where it comes from, as long as they have it together.


	2. In Which Chuck Hansen Is The Voice of Reason

The first time it came up, Yancy pretended he didn’t hear, and his therapist didn’t bring it up again for a few sessions. He isn’t stupid enough to think it’s not coming, though. 

Before they even get their jaeger, Raleigh is going to get moved into pilot housing with Chuck. The Beckets had been on the list for it, and Raleigh had kept his spot, so they are gonna get next choice, even before going through sims or the Mark 3 mock up that had taken Yancy out.

Since Medical doesn’t trust him enough to be left alone all day, Yancy will be transferred back to Medical until his condition improves.

No matter how far he’s come, they are still worried about potential seizures, his dizzy spells, and the fucking headaches. He doesn’t limp anymore, unless he’s exhausted, and he almost has control of his arm and hand back completely, though fine motor skills are going to be a long-term goal.

He won’t talk to any of them about it. Even when he knows it’s getting noted in his file. As far as he knows, no one has mentioned it to Raleigh. Or maybe the kid just doesn’t want to talk to him about what’s going to happen next.

As soon as Yancy’s cleared for duty, they want him moved into regular officer housing. Whatever he’s gonna do, he’s still a Ranger. Pentecost had told him that in person, as if he was offering some kind of comfort, and Yancy supposed it was in a way. He’s a Ranger because he’s jaeger-qualified, even if they won’t let him set foot in one now; there isn’t even a protocol in place for demotion. The PPDC equivalent is Captain, which means he can probably go wherever he wants to next.

As long as he doesn’t mind doing it alone.

And that’s the fucking crux of it all, isn’t it?

The psychs try to draw it out of him, as if saying it mattered, as if he’s gonna have a fucking revelation.

Yancy knows. He can’t always find the right words, even in his head, but he knows.

He has never lived a life separate from Raleigh. Hell, even back home their rooms had been right next to each other’s, and after Dad had bailed out, Raleigh had slept in his bed more often than not. Sharing a room at the Academy was nothing new.

Then there’d been training, and the drift. Jesus, the drift… The techs said it was all bullshit, but the instructors told them differently. He knows the ghost drift is real, knows he’d felt it with Raleigh since the first couple of drifts in the sims. He can still feel it sometimes, echoes of Raleigh’s thoughts and feelings, and it hasn’t faded since they stopped drifting. He can even catch hints of the excruciating static Raleigh had felt when the stroke had taken him out. He has an awareness of Raleigh in the back of his head, a sense of his existence that he couldn’t explain to anyone else in a million years.

It’s supposed to fade faster now that Raleigh’s started drifting with Chuck. He knows Raleigh still feels the ghost drift with him now, but there’s nothing to stop it from eroding away to nothing.

Yancy isn’t sure he can live without it now. He knows he can’t live without Raleigh. He’s still Raleigh’s older brother, the one who looked out for him, the one who made sure they got through everything life threw at them. That’s all he knows how to be.

He can’t hate Raleigh for looking out for him. He can’t hate him for moving on and getting a new co-pilot.

But he can’t even bear to think about moving out yet. Yancy can foresee the distance that’s going to grow between them, and it’s more terrifying than anything he’s ever imagined.

The pain and the stroke, the sudden inability to control his own body, to make the words come out right – these are nothing compared to the fear of losing Raleigh.

The psychs make more notes on his file.

******** 

Their first drift in the sims doesn’t go as perfectly as their combat testing. Raleigh’s experience makes up for Chuck’s lack of it, though, and he manages to pull Chuck out of a RABIT of his father rescuing him before the bomb dropped in Sydney. He doesn’t get too far into the horror of realizing that there’s no time to get his mum before Raleigh yanks him out of it. After that, it’s smooth sailing.

Chuck is blushing when they get their helmets off, though, and Raleigh, to his own dismay, finds it adorable.

Goddamnit.

The drifts after that only improve.

Their numbers aren’t quite as high as his and Yancy’s, but no one expects them to be, since siblings and related pairs always score higher. They’re damned good, though. The two of them are way ahead of the curve by the end of the first two-week cycle of sims.

Raleigh has found that he honestly likes Chuck now, after drifting with him. You don’t get to keep your usual defenses up during a drift, and once he was past all of Chuck’s spikes, he found someone different, yet completely the same.

Chuck really is what he seems: he’s arrogant and fearless and he’s a fucking genius. For all that he’s kind of a prick, Chuck is also sensitive and emotionally honest, full of clear-eyed enthusiasm; he loves his father far more than he ever resented him for not being able to rescue his mum, but he’s too shy or too stubborn to admit it, to himself or to Herc. His asshole teenage years have obviously not quite passed, though he’s getting there.

What shocks Raleigh is how little Chuck holds back from him. With Yancy, there hadn’t been many surprises, just a twining together of two who had already been close. Maybe it was his inexperience, but Chuck keeps almost nothing back in the drift. Chuck trusts him. Raleigh doesn’t know what he’s done to earn that, but he’ll be damned if he loses it. 

He wants to talk to Yancy about it, but he doesn’t know if he can. Somehow that seems cruel, but then so does holding back, when he’s always talked to Yance about everything else in his life. How is he supposed to deal the space between them now? Especially when the ghost drift is still in his head and they’re still sleeping in the same bed every night?

Neither of them has said a word about it. On the second night, Yancy had just put a hand on Raleigh’s leg when he’d gone to climb up to the top bunk, and Raleigh had gotten into Yancy’s bed instead, the two of them shifting until Yancy could spoon him. They’d slept like rocks, without Yancy getting sick or waking up with nightmares, and somehow things weren’t awkward between them in the mornings. The next night Yancy had simply scooted over to make room for him, and it’s been like that ever since, even on the days they don’t get along so well. At night they are together, and it’s more comforting than anything Raleigh’s felt in a long time.

He doesn’t even know if he’s been able to keep it out of the drift, and after two weeks, he doesn’t much care. Chuck will have to get over it.

“Hey, you get the notice?” Chuck says one afternoon, catching up to him as they go to get their armor removed. This sim had gone like the others and everybody’s feeling pretty smug about it. 

“Which one? Medical, psychs, code change updates on every single jaeger ever? Eyes-only memos on security protocols in Shatterdomes they haven’t built yet? Unique investment opportunities?” Raleigh snorted. His mailbox is a constant disaster, since everybody copied Rangers on everything, just in case. 

“Housing getting us quarters.”

Raleigh freezes in place. “What?”

“Ranger quarters?” Chuck turns and looks at him, curious. “They’re moving you and me into our own room together. Any of this familiar?”

“When did this come down?”

“Last night. They said it’ll be ready by Friday. I wonder if this means we’re any closer to getting our jaeger assigned.”

And Raleigh runs. Chuck opens his mouth to protest – they’ve got all the routine after-simulator bullshit still to run through – but then he gets it.

Yancy.

Raleigh won’t want to leave Yancy.

Fuck.

He follows at a slower pace, taking time to get back into real clothes. He owes his co-pilot some privacy, he supposes, when he can give it to him. Raleigh’s not bad in the drift, but he has problems suppressing his emotions over Yancy, and Chuck already knows more about what it’s like to lose your co-pilot but not your brother than he ever wanted to.

It’s part of the job, he reckons, but he still called his dad up to talk about it last weekend. Herc had told him just to be patient. The Beckets would work themselves out, and in the meantime, Chuck had to stand up for his co-pilot. Rangers had to look out for each other. The fact that Raleigh’s only 18 and he’s 16 doesn’t change anything. If they’re old enough to pilot, and they are, they’re old enough to work this shit out.

So Chuck gets dressed, puts off the training officers with the excuse of a family emergency, and takes a stroll down towards the room the Beckets share. At least until Friday.

The Academy is always buzzing with activity, but everybody moves for him. People smile at him, and some say hello. He’s Ranger Hansen now, and damn him if that hasn’t made a difference in the way people treat him. Instead of being a cadet in an Academy full of cadets, he’s now one of the very few who’s made it, and his Ranger tag puts him in a whole different category from the cadets who’d written him off as an asshole skating on his family name. It didn’t matter how many times he’d come in at the top of his class; there were always people convinced forever that he didn’t deserve to be there.

So it’s with no small amount of satisfaction that he spots the unmatched cadets teaching the incoming class basic hand-to-hand techniques. They’ll all be matched up and gone before he ever gets around to his mandatory stint as visiting Ranger-instructor, so he enjoys the looks he gets from them now. Almost none are hostile, but every goddamned one is envious.

He may conceivably slow down a bit to watch them run the rookies through their forms, but not too much. It’s a good thing he’s already out of the training area when it happens.

The sudden burning in his eyes, the adrenaline surge, and the way he’s gasping for air make him stagger, and he has to stop where he is, leaning up against a wall until he can get on top of it. 

He is so fucking furious at Yancy Becket right now, and so hurt, that he can barely stand it. Panic hits him. That stupid asshole is just going to pretend –

That’s when Chuck realizes what’s going on. 

That’s Raleigh in his head and it’s triggering his own body off as if those were his own emotions.

Ghost drift. They swear up and down that no such thing exists, but that’s because they can’t get any data on it. The pilots know better. His dad and his uncle had both warned him about it, and he’d listened, because the Hansens might be shit at a lot of things, but they know jaeger piloting like no one else.

It isn’t supposed to be this fucking strong, though. Dad had said it was like catching currents, whispers of things, but this was like getting swamped by a wave. It makes his skin crawl, make him want to throw up, and he’s not sure there’s a goddamned thing he can do about it but hope it eases up.

The supposedly covert glances he’s getting do nothing to make it better. Nosey fuckers.

He closes his eyes, starts the breathing routine of counting 4 in and 4 out that they’d taught him for crisis situations, and pushes back from the wall. He can do this. He’s going to find Raleigh and fix his bullshit for him. Knock some Becket heads together. That’s what his dad would do, right?

Right.

If his first few steps are a little wobbly, he’s okay with that. He wouldn’t be the first or the last headcase the Academy has ever seen. It’s almost an accomplishment: only Rangers seem to get jacked up that bad. It’s hard to be proud of this one, though.  
*******

“What the… fe-- fuck do you want from me?!”

Yancy’s speech problems are from the stroke, and usually that reminder would be enough to cool Raleigh off. His brother’s aphasia is mild, but it usually pisses him off more than whatever they’re arguing about. He could go from irritation to full blown rage after struggling for the right word and how to pronounce it, and Raleigh always backs off in the face of that. There’s no point in helping Yancy fight himself.

This time, though…

Yancy’s furious, but more than that, he’s terrified, and Raleigh can feel it as much as see it. He’s not used to this – they’ve ghosted before but never this intensely – and it’s hard to keep his own emotional balance while Yancy yells at him.

“I told you, I didn’t put our names on the list! I can’t fucking control everything that goes down here!” Raleigh tries to lower his voice, but goddamn it’s hard. “You know they were gonna move us eventually anyway.”

“Bullshit,” Yancy snaps at him. His hands are shaking and he’s gone pale, and Raleigh wants to gather him up and help him sit down. He’s not stupid enough to do that right now, though. Might lose a limb.

“You went out and got yourself a new ca—caa—co… Hansen! And now you’re dumping my s-sorry ass assoons… a-as soon as… as you can!”

“I’ve told you, I’m not leaving you behind, you stupid asshole!” Raleigh’s bellowing at him now, advancing on his brother with his fists clenched. He can’t help himself. It hurts so much that Yancy’s afraid he’ll abandon him now, after everything they’ve gone through together. He’s been there, every minute, since it happened. He can still feel his brother in his head. “What else do I have to do?!” 

Yancy shifts into a fighting stance without thinking about it, and everything stops.

In all their many fights, they’ve never gotten this loud or this close to actual violence. Not since Dad abandoned them. They stare at each other, shocked.

In the silence afterwards, Yancy lets his head droop and closes his eyes. He’s dizzy and he thinks that maybe he’s going to throw up, but there’s no fucking way he’ll do that in front of Raleigh if he can get away with it. The panic is riding him hard, though. Being in the same room with his brother right now is like standing next to a bonfire. He can feel Raleigh’s anger and his hurt, and it’s relentless.

He’s grateful when exhaustion starts graying the edges of his vision and making him numb. He can do this. Right? He just needs a little space.

“Nothing. Don’t want nothin’ more from you.” Yancy straightens up and moves unsteadily to the wardrobe they share, pulling it open. His hands are shaking and it’s hard to grip anything with either one right now, but he manages and starts throwing his clothes on the bed.

“Jesus, Yance, what are you doing?” Raleigh asks him, his voice hoarse from shouting.

“They want me back in Medical.” Yancy’s voice slurs the last word into something out of a cartoon, but he doesn’t react to it. He doesn’t look at Raleigh, either. “Can’t be trusted by myself.”

“I said I wasn’t leaving you,” Raleigh says, but it’s weaker than he’d like. He means it, though, every fucking word. “I’ll resign if I have to.”

“Give up on sa- saving the wo- planet, so you can look after me? Now who’s a stupid asshole?”

“Both of you, from what I can see.” Chuck says, stepping into their room. He closes the door behind him, and Raleigh realizes a little vaguely that it’s been open all this time. Shit.

“Don’t need you he- here, Hansen.” Yancy’s dismisses him coldly, turning his back on them both.

“Well, that’s too fucking bad, isn’t it?” Chuck can’t say the older pilot doesn’t intimidate him at least a little, but he’s not going to back down. “Hearing this arsehole in my head sort of makes it my business, doesn’t it?”

He waves a hand at Raleigh, who looks surprised, so maybe this ghost thing doesn’t run both ways yet. Yancy, on the other hand, glares at him but mostly looks like he’s going to puke, so maybe this isn’t a good time to talk about it.

“Chuck –“ Raleigh starts, but he holds a hand up.

“Look,” Chuck said, leaning back against the door and crossing his arms, because maybe he was feeling the tiniest bit insecure stepping into the middle of this hurricane. “I get that you don’t wanna split up, but you’re making this harder than you have to.”

“Thanks for the input, Chuck, but—“ Yancy starts nastily, but Chuck talks right over him.

“Why don’t you ask for family housing?”

Both Beckets stare at him like he started speaking Mandarin or something. 

Idiots.

“It’s not much; they just knocked a couple walls down to make them. Thing is, there’d be room enough for all three of us.”

“Like I really want –“ Yancy begins, but Raleigh talks over him too. He gets the official Becket Death Glare for this, but doesn’t seem to notice. The younger Becket has lit up like a Christmas tree.

“That’d be perfect! You think we could get into one?”

“Don’t see why not. He still needs you to look after him, right?”

Yancy bristles, and Raleigh gives in to his baser urges by wrapping his arms around his brother and hugging him into immobility. “I know you don’t. I know,” he tells him, trying hard not to sound patronizing, “but they don’t need to know that, right? And we’re all Rangers, right, Chuck? They’re not gonna mess with us.”

It hangs in the air for a few moments.

“Not really looking forward to sharing a bathroom with you two wankers, but yeah, I reckon they’d let us do what we want. Not a lot of Rangers with families, yeah?” Chuck offers, and he’s a little non-plussed that it’s working out this easily. 

Yancy hasn’t managed to finish a sentence, but Raleigh can feel how his emotions are settling down. 

Chuck thinks he can feel that through Raleigh, but he’s not sure. The ghost drift has faded away to nothing but a whisper now, which is a lot more like what his dad had told him about. Thank Christ. He’s not sure how much more of that he can take.

Yancy finally sighs and leans back against his brother. He’s fucking exhausted, and maybe this bullshit will work out. He doesn’t really want to share a room with Hansen, but he can’t help the relief he feels.

“Fine,” he huffs at last, trying to look put-upon and fooling no one.

Raleigh and Chuck look at each other, and Chuck can clearly read the relief there, even as the two of them barely keep from grinning at each other.

Chuck wasn’t lying. He genuinely doesn’t mind sharing a room with both of them. He’d been living in family quarters with his dad and uncle before going to the Academy, and since then he’s been living in the dorm with the rest of the cadets. He’s used to not having a huge amount of privacy.

And at least they’d have their own shower this time.

******* 

It works out.

Yancy’s doctors, particularly his psychs, are happy to assure Personnel that the Beckets should stay together. It will be better for his recovery.

Medical also approve anything that reduces the stress on Raleigh right now, because it will go a long way towards cementing his drift partnership with Chuck. Happy pilots have steadier handshakes. Everybody knows that.

Command only cares that co-pilots room together. Being together as much as possible helps partners bond, and everybody knows that too.

The three of them move in. There’s a bunk bed, a full-size single, a kitchenette, and a surprisingly big shower. Yancy claims the single, and Raleigh doesn’t argue, because he’s not going to give up sleeping with Yancy until his brother tells him to fuck off. Chuck doesn’t argue because he doesn’t care; he’s already seen it in the drift by the time they move in, and he knows what’s behind it. Besides, it makes Raleigh happy, and it seems to make Yancy less of an asshole, and he’s all for that.

Anything that makes Yancy Becket less of an asshole has his full support.

Yancy doesn’t like him, and Chuck understands that. If he’d been the one who’d lost his shot at a jaeger, he knows he’d be fucking unbearable. That doesn’t make Yancy’s sarcasm any easier to bear. It doesn’t stop him from returning fire, either. He may be the youngest of them, but he can give as good as he gets. 

It’s Raleigh who holds everything together, mostly because the other two need him too much, and they know the weight he’s carrying. Not upsetting Raleigh is probably the only thing they agree on.

They don’t have much time to work on it, though.

Yancy gave into the incessant positivity of his psychs and vaguely indicated that he might be interested in LOCCENT work if he can get it. It turns out there’s no LOCCENT in the world that would turn down a shot at getting a Ranger onboard, and so now he’s in speech therapy as often as physical therapy. They have him wired up to everything imaginable nine hours a day, with a small crew of people staring at his every attempt to control his own body, and it’s maddening.

At the same time, Raleigh and Chuck are experiencing something similar as they advance to the type of conn pod mock up that Yancy had his heart attack in. Raleigh’s experience and Chuck’s talent are pushing them through faster than the average pair. It makes Raleigh increasingly nervous, and he can’t hide it from either of them. Being in Yancy’s place in the test pod makes him want to throw up.

Yancy holds him tight when the nightmares return.

They settle in together under a truce that’s tense and yet comforting in its familiarity. Their relationships with Raleigh hold them together.

It’s not perfect, but it’s theirs, and they make it work.

*******  
Six weeks later, they’re told that they’re being assigned to a jaeger. She’s a brand-new Mark III, and Raleigh falls in love with her as soon as he sees the first schematics. Her name will be Gypsy Danger.

Chuck calls his dad in the middle of the night, their time. He won’t stop bragging about her until the Beckets forcibly separate him from his tablet, hoping they can finally get some sleep. On the far end, Herc might have been alarmed if the irate brothers hadn’t been laughing by the end of the wrestling match. The call ends with his son squawking in outrage as the elder Becket declares victory, and the line goes dead without another word.

“Bunch of assholes,” Herc mutters.

“No wonder Chuck’s compatible with them,” Scott offers, wrapping his brother up in a hug, and Herc scowls dramatically before trying to punch him in the head.


	3. In Which Absence Might Make the Heart Grow Fonder, If You'd Just Fuck Off and Die

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Raleigh's the only adult here, the Shatterdome is not OSHA compliant, multilingualism is a mixed blessing, and now they're stuck together, possibly forever. Oh, the horror.

Gipsy Danger is assigned to the Icebox; both Beckets and one disgruntled Hansen move the 400+ miles from Kodiak Island to the Anchorage Shatterdome.

Gipsy goes straight to the dome via transport ship, accompanied by her new J-tech crew, and her pilots fly in a week or so later. Chuck complains to his co-pilot and equally unsympathetic brother about being stuck up north for the rest of his life, and Yancy tells him that getting posted right around the corner from home pretty much   
sucks. The Shatterdome is only a couple of hours away from where the Beckets grew up; so much for joining the service and seeing the world.

“Home again, home ag-gain,” Yancy grumbles, staring through the window as the Shatterdome comes into view.

Raleigh only smiles and slings an arm around his shoulder.

******* 

The Icebox knows all about the Beckets and Chuck Hansen.

Raleigh’s relieved to find that their new quarters are identical to the last ones, down to the number and configuration of beds. He’d expected to explain the whole thing over again, but no one seems to care much about it here. As they will find out, Rangers are expected to be weird in one way or another, and their arrangement barely even counts.

They report in, are given their assignments and training schedules, and then the remainder of that day is theirs. Tomorrow they’ll meet the Marshall and Yancy’s commander, and then they’ll be swallowed up by their new lives.

That means today they go see Gipsy for the first time.

Yancy doesn’t want to, because Gipsy should have been his and Raleigh’s. He wants to be bitter and selfish instead, and let the Wonder Twins go meet their fucking jaeger. He’s got to go check in with Medical anyway.

He can see it in Raleigh’s face, though: not just the resignation, but also the understanding and the pain. Raleigh and Yancy Becket, jaeger pilots, is never going to be a thing. Raleigh gets it.

And Yancy won’t make him carry that for him. He can’t be his co-pilot, but he’s still his big brother.

“C-c’mon, let’s go check out your ride,” he says, and if he can’t really extinguish the ache he feels, he doesn’t let it show, either.

Raleigh beams at him, and for once, Yancy doesn’t feel quite so useless.

*******

Jaegers are fucking huge. Everyone knows that. Seeing one, though, is an almost visceral experience: there’s an urge to just run away when confronted with anything that big, that menacing. For some people, it’s impossible to overcome that urge; unpredictable panic among the crowds is part of the reason jaegers stopped marching in parades. 

Chuck Hansen is not one of those people. It’s not like Chuck hasn’t seen one before – he spent a year climbing all over Lucky 7 before the Academy even accepted his application, after all. He still stares up at her like the biggest bogan in existence.

She’s not his first jaeger. It’s just that Gipsy Danger, his Gipsy, their Gipsy, is the biggest, most amazing jaeger in the history of the world, and Chuck can barely believe that she’s here, standing in her bay, looming over everything, and just waiting for her pilots to bring her to life. 260 feet high, 1980 tons, nuclear reactor for a heart, and all theirs.

All theirs. He glances over at Raleigh and grins, because Raleigh looks completely awestruck, his mouth slightly open and his eyes huge. He looks over at Chuck, and when their eyes meet, they both break out in enormous grins. 

Chuck’s never been so proud of anything in his whole life.

Raleigh throws an arm around Chuck’s shoulders, but he reaches out for Yancy at the same time, grabbing his arm and pulling him in for the same treatment. Chuck shoots a look at him and sees Yancy on the other side, and he’s a little surprised to see that the man is smiling too. Maybe not quite so wide as Raleigh, and maybe his eyes don’t quite sparkle, whatever the hell that phrase actually means, but even Chuck can see that he’s legitimately happy for Raleigh. It has to hurt, staring up at what could have been his, but he’s not letting that out. He really has to have it buried too, because Chuck’s not feeling anything from Raleigh that he can tell apart from his own emotions.

Well, shit, good for him.

Good for them. 

He wants to take several hundred pictures of Gipsy and flood his father and uncle’s in-boxes. He wants to mailbomb the entirety of Australia.

He can’t wait to get his hands on her. 

******* 

He hates, more than anything, not being able to take care of his little brother anymore. 

Yancy doesn’t spoil this for him. He knows he doesn’t. 

He’s miserable and he’s jealous, but that’s not all he is, and he pushes his happiness for Raleigh to the forefront until it hides the rest of his bullshit.

He’s not stupid enough to think he can keep hiding forever. It’s time to deal with this. Time to get his shit together, time to move forward again.

He can do it. He’s Raleigh’s big brother, after all. Gotta look out for the kid, even when he can barely look after himself. That’s what he does.

That’s who he is.

******* 

The first neural handshake in Gipsy fails, and both of them end up RABITing before the connection is remotely powered down. 

The second failure makes Chuck bite his tongue hard enough to bleed all over the faceplate of his helmet, and the sight of that throws Raleigh all the way out of the drift.

There’s talk of sending them back to the Academy for testing before word comes from the Marshal that the J-techs had better have that jaeger stripped down to the bare metal hull before they start blaming his pilots.

Chuck and Raleigh do not take the failure well.

It takes over a week before the techs admit it’s both a hardware and a software problem, but definitely not a pilot problem. After three days, Yancy tries sleeping on LOCCENT’s crash cot instead of dealing with the stressed-out shit heads he rooms with anymore. At some point well after midnight, a nearly somnolent Chuck fetches him back because Raleigh can’t sleep without him, and Raleigh’s keeping Chuck awake. 

Twenty minutes later both co-pilots are sniping at each other again, and Yancy screams at them to shut up, promising to murder both of them if he spends another night without sleep.

Raleigh notices that Yancy doesn’t stutter or trip up on his words at all when he’s pissed off and tired, but he’s wise enough not to mention it.

When word comes down that Gipsy’s code is being updated and her Pons replaced due to various faults, Yancy celebrates with the first beer he’s had in months and sleeps like a baby that night.

Jerks.

******* 

Anomalies are noted in Yancy’s neural patterns. Similar anomalies appear in the drift records for Gipsy Danger’s pilots, but since they don’t affect anything, no one does more than note them for future reference.

Medical and J-Science don’t see any reason to compare notes, especially when things are going so well.

******* 

Yancy’s training for LOCCENT duty takes less time than he’d thought it would. He knows jaegers from the other side of the video displays, and it gives him an edge. The Icebox is perfectly happy to have him, and he gets along with his new boss, Tendo Choi, like they’re old friends. He gets his qualifications done for all the stations and sits in as an observer for two jaeger deployments, but they’re still waiting for the all-clear on his speech issues. The chance of something going wrong in his head when lives are depending on him is too high to run.

He throws himself into his training and into his therapy with vengeance. He has more time to himself than he’d like, and he fills it with as much work as he can. Because of that, the weakness on his right side improves dramatically.

It’s satisfying, but it doesn’t really put him in a better mood. He’s impatient and frustrated, and tensions run high between him and Chuck and Raleigh sometimes.

Yancy is perfectly aware that a lot of it is his fault. He’s being a prick, and he can’t seem to stop himself. 

He and Chuck are engaged in low-intensity warfare, each of them trying to keep it under Raleigh’s radar. Chuck and Yancy are rivals without being rivals, because Raleigh won’t allow it. He’s the peacemaker just by being there, because they don’t want to upset him. He won’t take sides, but he takes each fight as some kind of personal failure, and neither can stand to do that to him.

So they try to be as subtle and as obnoxious to each other as they can. 

It was never going to last forever, though. The last straw eventually comes. 

En Français.

It turns out that Yancy, by some quirk of his brain, is currently more fluent in French than in English. There are measurably fewer disfluencies when he’s speaking his mother’s language. The new therapists encourage him to use French whenever he’s growing frustrated, and they can see improvements in his English when he does. There’s a number of people who speak various French dialects at the dome, and both of Yancy’s languages improve. Then, because he’s kind of a dick, he stops using English with Raleigh. Completely.

It actually takes Raleigh almost a full week to realize what’s going on. He doesn’t mind speaking French with Yance; it’s always been one of their special things, shared by almost nobody else around them when they grew up. He loves hearing how easily Yancy speaks it now, and the way his sense of humor is coming back with his fluency.

Then he catches the look on Chuck’s face, and he gets it.

Chuck Hansen speaks English, a fair bit of Mandarin that he’s been picking up lately, and not a single word of French.

And Yancy knows it.

He and Chuck come back to their quarters one night, full of energy after taking Gipsy out into the bay for one of her final test runs. Afterwards, Raleigh felt himself ghosting strongly with Chuck, and it’s the first time he knew it for sure. It’s the first time their ghosting has gone both ways.

Chuck’s ecstatic, because most of the time ghosting isn’t weird at all, not to him; it’s warm and reassuring, and it’s something that only Rangers do. Real Rangers like his dad and Uncle Scott. He likes Raleigh and he trusts Raleigh, and it’s – it’s just good, is what it is.

Yancy smiles, because it’s impossible not to when Raleigh’s like that. Then he asks his brother about it in French, and Raleigh falls into the language without even thinking about it. Just like that, in five minutes they’ve effectively locked Chuck out of the unit that is The Beckets.

Again.

The warm little trickle of the ghost drift shifts and fades. 

He hears his name, but no one’s talking to him, and that’s all of this shit he’s prepared to take.

“You know, why don’t you two just go fuck yourselves?” Chuck snaps, grabbing his jacket and pulling the door open. Raleigh gapes at him, shocked. “Make sure you translate that for him.”

“Va te faire foutre,” Yancy says cheerfully, but Chuck’s already gone by then, slamming the door behind him.

Yancy’s completely unprepared when Raleigh grabs him by the shirt and jerks him up out of his chair.

“Nice work, asshole. I know, it should’ve been you and me, but at least we’ve still got each other, right? You have any idea how lonely he is already, without you cutting him out like this?”

“He has his whole family –“Yancy snarls, but Raleigh cuts him off.

“The only family Chuck’s got left are on active duty, and he spent the whole goddamned time at the Academy alone, because he can probably build his own jaeger from scratch, but he doesn’t know how to talk to people. I’m all he’s really got, and I’m not gonna let the two of you take each other apart.” Raleigh’s both angry and hurt, and Yancy backs down, as much as he doesn’t want to.

“It didn’t mean anything. He’s such a little shit,” he grumbles. 

“So am I,” Raleigh says, letting go of him and smoothing down the creases he left in his shirt. He smiles a little, tentatively. “Or so I’ve been told. Use your amazing big brother gift for tolerance on him, too.”

They stare at each other, and Raleigh doesn’t say please, but maybe Yancy hears it anyway. He grumbles, but doesn’t object when Raleigh’s arms slide around him, and after a moment, he hugs him back. They stand like that for a long time.

******* 

English reappears in the Becket-Hansen quarters, although French never entirely goes away. It’s not meant to hurt, though, and it loses its significance.

Yancy pulls back on sniping at Chuck, and Chuck stops glaring at him when he thinks Raleigh won’t notice. Being the older brother doesn’t make Yancy any better or more gracious at apologizing, and even though Chuck is equally terrible at accepting it, they patch things up.

Raleigh would thank them for it, but he’s not really all that happy being the only adult in the house.

Jerks.

By the time Chuck sees the fight between Raleigh and Yancy in the drift, the Beckets have long since made peace, with him and with each other.

He still smacks Raleigh upside the head for it later, when they’re out of Gipsy and Raleigh’s not expecting it. Wide-eyed, Raleigh does the only reasonable thing and tackles the bastard in return, sending the two of them crashing into a wall. It might have gone badly from there – they are collectively and individually terrible at backing down from any kind of fight – but members of Gipsy’s crew break it up, leaving them glaring at each other.

The thing is, both of them are born scrappers, but neither is any good at holding a grudge, especially against each other. Fifteen minutes later, Raleigh is laughing at one of Chuck’s sarcastic remarks, and the whole thing is mostly forgotten after that.

Only mostly, because even though he’s over the embarrassment, a part of Chuck holds tight to the memory of Raleigh standing up for him, confronting Yancy over him. Of the way Raleigh understood Chuck, and wanted him brought close, into the protection of their family. Of the way Yancy had eventually accepted him.

He will always hold that memory close, and later, in the years to come, when he’s cold and bleeding and afraid, as alone as he’s ever been in his life, it will bring him warmth.

******** 

“Tell us what’s happened,” Herc demands over the phone, and even though he’s old enough to recognize and appreciate the concern on his dad’s face, some contrary part of Chuck wants to tell the old man to fuck off. He doesn’t.

“We’re grounded, Brawler and Brutus are covering, and fuck if I know when this is gonna blow over,” Chuck sighs, and great, there’s Uncle Scott on the phone too, hovering over Herc’s shoulder. He should have known that they were going to be like this when he got his jaeger. His dad had long ago perfected the art of knowing exactly what Chuck was up to no matter how many miles were between them, and this was only the latest example. He was still in Medical with Raleigh, and Yancy wasn’t even back from Vancouver, when the top priority call from Herc had come in.

“First thing: is Raleigh alright? We heard something happened to him,” Scott interjects.

“Yeah, yeah, he’s okay. Fucking tech doing work up high didn’t have his tools secured, and something hit Ray hard enough to knock him over, and he hit his head on the way down. Lost consciousness for a bit, but the docs say he’ll be good to go soon.”

“Second: are you okay?”

“Yeah. I’m fine.”

“So now tell us the rest of it,” Herc says, because of course he knows that there’s more to it. Chuck gives in.

He tells them how Yancy was at a hospital in Vancouver overnight, getting some final tests done before he could go on active duty. (He doesn’t tell them how Raleigh didn’t sleep for shit last night, which is part of why he’s snoring behind Chuck right now.) He tells them how Yancy was wired up to every conceivable diagnostic machine when Raleigh had his accident, and how Yancy freaked out at the same time Raleigh lost consciousness, well before any news could have reached him. His heart rate, respiration, brain activity, and every other possible reading was now part of the official data.

So, you know, the ghost drift was now confirmed and documented. 

Which wasn’t that much difference from what pilots had been telling them all along.

Except that this time, there was something else. 

Something else in the form of Chuck frantically calling Vancouver because he had a terrifyingly strong feeling that something was wrong with Yancy. The doctors were still calming Yancy down and trying to figure out what had happened when Ranger Hansen had gotten his call pushed right into their lab. Chuck had actually been the person to tell Yancy what happened.

“Are you sure? Absolutely sure about what you felt?” Herc asks him.

“Of course I’m fucking sure,” Chuck snaps. He’s sick of this question already. “It was like that one time with Raleigh, just a little weaker. Nearly jumped out of my skin. Ray was fine, so I had to find out what was going on with the other dipshit.”

“That’s…”

“I know what it is, yeah? I’ve heard it enough already. Ghosting isn’t real, and if it was real, the Beckets shouldn’t be able to do it, and I sure as hell can’t do it with someone I never drifted with. And they did, and I did, and now Yancy’s on his way home so we can all get sliced up together and put under microscopes, or whatever these fuckers do.”

Scott laughs out loud. “Knew you’d somehow make this job even weirder than it already is.”

“You’ll be alright,” Herc says soothingly, seeing the scowl building up on Chuck’s face. “They’ll poke at you a bit, then say they’ve no bloody idea what’s going on. As long as you and Raleigh are still good, that’ll be the end of it. They’ll put Gipsy in the rotation as soon as they can.”

“How’s Yancy?” Scott asks.

“Afraid they won’t let him work in LOCCENT now. Other than that, he’s fine. We’re all good, just Raleigh’s gonna have a fucker of a headache.”

“Welcome to life as a rock star, boy.”

“Fuck you too, Dad,” Chuck says with a tired laugh.

It’s almost embarrassing how much better Chuck feels after talking to them.

*******

The drift and all the technology around it are all so new that it’s a miracle they work so damned well. Reluctantly, Medical admits that they can’t just dismiss any anomalies that crop up, and they have to work with what they have.

Rangers Hansen, Becket, and Becket are pulled into Medical for two days. All of their drift data is reviewed. All three of them are wired up, the pilots are put in simulators, and the data is pored over. People in white lab coats poke and stare at them, and then leave them to wait. They are bored to the edge of death. Chuck glares at Yancy like this is his fault, and Yancy flips him off behind Raleigh’s back. If Raleigh’s head didn’t hurt, the other two would’ve fought just for something to do.

Instead, they start teaching each other to swear in foreign languages. It’s good for passing the time.

 

The verdict comes down quickly, because there’s a war on, and Gipsy Danger’s going to do absolutely no one any good without pilots. It’s acknowledged that the three of them have some level of ghost drifting going on. There’s strong suspicion that Yancy’s stroke while connected to Raleigh has something to do with it, but there’s no proof of what.

PPDC scientists would like to poke them and prod them much, much longer, but there’s a war on. Rangers are on the front lines, and there’s no time. 

It doesn’t seem to interfere with Raleigh and Chuck’s handshake at all, and there’s no history of it having any effect on their drift, so in the end it’s just marked down on everyone’s medical files and let go. A very strong recommendation is made that the Beckets be stationed together from now on, and Command endorses it on the grounds that anything that might upset or disrupt that drift is inherently bad.

Yancy is prohibited from working in LOCCENT – but only on Gipsy’s drops. He’s cleared for duty. He still has tremors and some weakness on his right side, but his speech has improved greatly, and it gets better with stress, not worse. He’s still stuck with both kinds of therapy, though.

The first night back in their quarters, Yancy curls up around Raleigh and doesn’t let go, even in their sleep.

********* 

Three days after their jaeger officially goes on active duty, the kaiju alarm goes off and Raleigh, Chuck, and Yancy roll out of their beds like they’ve been set on fire, not all of them voluntarily. Still, it doesn’t take long at all before they’re at their duty stations, waiting for the news to come down.

It’s a category three, codename Yamarashi, and the projections show it hitting California, probably one of the southern cities. 

The rest of the Shatterdome jolts to life as all the lights in the jaeger bays go on.

Gipsy Danger is going to war.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Most of my descriptions of Yancy's stroke and recovery are from an experience with a family friend. His recovery took longer than Yancy's, but then he didn't have a Shatterdome full of people pushing him.
> 
> Now that they're stuck together, things pick up from here.


	4. In Which Gipsy Danger is a Goddamned Ninja Warrior

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gipsy Danger goes into battle for the first time, Yamarashi has a hate-on for the Queen Mary, I randomly include Romeo Blue, Chuck has a birthday, Yancy has a crisis, and Chuck uses his dimples for evil.

Deployment, it turns out, is mostly boring as fuck. 

After the scramble to get suited up and get Gipsy in position, hanging in harness for most of the trip south is an enormous letdown. As unconventional as the PPDC can be in other ways, it has the military spirit of “hurry up and wait” down to a fine art. Raleigh and Chuck are forced to wait, muscles as relaxed as they can manage so that Gipsy doesn’t mirror them and accidentally wreck her transports.

They’ve been trained for it. Yancy had fallen asleep once during that section, and the Beckets had been forced to repeat it: relaxed was one thing, unconscious was another. Once they ran through every possible diagnostic, they were basically left to watch the video feed from Long Beach and wait until they were close enough for Gipsy to run the rest of the way.

“Fucking Christ, it’s like watching a goddamned movie,” Chuck says, and Raleigh looks over at him with wide eyes, because it is. They’re used to the freakishness of kaiju by now, but this one is attacking a goddamned ocean liner. Like a Titanic-style, old-time ocean liner, black and white with three huge smokestacks, in its own enclosure next to a dock. The kaiju apparently fucking hates that thing, because it’s torn right into the middle of it, pulling the stacks down and smashing through the decks. 

“Where’s Gamera when you need him?” 

Chuck has no idea what Raleigh’s talking about, but images flip through the drift: _curled up on the couch with Yancy, can’t pay the heat bill this month so it’s the fireplace and days and nights spent curled up in a cocoon of quilts in the silent house, watching old movies together: Gamera: Guardian of the Universe on Mom’s laptop_

“A giant fucking turtle, mate?”

“A giant fucking _fire-breathing_ turtle that can _fly_ ,” Raleigh laughs. 

“Well, hell, what would they need us for?”

Then Los Angeles LOCCENT comes on the line, and everything kicks into gear. 

This may be Gipsy’s first drop on a live target, but they’ve done most of this so many times in simulations and training that the simpler parts of this -- disengaging from their transports, hitting the water, and moving down the coast to take up their position – go off without a hitch. They may be the youngest team in history, but they know their jobs.

The real test of a jaeger and her pilots is combat.

It’s a two-jaeger drop, pairing them up with local boys: the Gage twins in Romeo Blue. Gipsy’s the junior jaeger here, even though she’s the brightest and shiniest in the Corps, and she’s the backup, mostly to give her a combat trial before she gets called out on her own. Yamarashi is huge, though, and when both jaegers are in position, it becomes clear that having two of them may have been the right call anyway.

Chuck and Raleigh are too charged on adrenaline and drift-fueled aggression to be truly alarmed when the kaiju dodges Romeo’s newly installed chest missiles and charges, not seeming to mind when her Gatling guns rip chunks of flesh from it. Romeo’s slow, but she’s heavy as hell, and Gipsy’s pilots aren’t the only ones shocked when she goes down underneath the kaiju, smashing a massive freighter beneath them.

Raleigh can see the tiny figures of people fleeing from the dock as the cargo containers going tumbling, and rage floods the drift. Why the hell hadn’t they been evacuated already? There shouldn’t be anyone within a hundred motherfucking miles of here!

It’s not clear where the idea comes from, then or later. Maybe it’s from the movies the Beckets had loved so much, or from something Chuck’s read; maybe it just seems like a good idea at the time.

Yamarashi is beating at Romeo, trying to reach the conn pod but getting caught up on the sharp fin that sticks out of Romeo’s chest for just that reason. It doesn’t seem to realize Gipsy’s still there when the jaeger pulls the cargo crane off the dock and gets one end of the cable in each massive hand. 

It notices when the cable is whipped around its neck, though. It notices when Gipsy’s foot comes down on the base of its tail, crushing it, but more importantly giving the jaeger leverage. It absolutely notices when Gipsy’s arms pull back and the cable slices into its neck.

They weren’t expecting what happened next. They only meant to choke it, or maybe crush its throat, to pull it off of Romeo Blue.

The cable is rated for the heaviest cargo. With Gipsy’s strength behind it, it cuts right through the kaiju’s neck. The cable goes slack, Gipsy stumbles back as the tension’s released, and with a gurgling hiss, Yamarashi’s head comes off, toppling into the water as a spray of blue blood fountains from its neck.

Raleigh and Chuck stare at it and then each other as the other jaeger shoves the corpse off and moves to deeper water to wash the blue off. Numbly, Gipsy follows, letting the cable drop behind it. It’s standard procedure, after all.

When it finally hits them that they’ve not only killed their first kaiju but _fucking decapitated it_ , Chuck’s whoop of joy nearly blows out the LOCCENT speakers in both Shatterdomes.

In the Anchorage LOCCENT, sitting quietly in the back, Yancy can’t stop grinning.

******* 

In August, Chuck turns seventeen. His dad and Uncle Scott are deployed that day, and Gipsy’s crew know better than to say a word until Lucky 7’s back in base, safe and sound with another notch on her belt. The Beckets do the same thing they always do when the elder Hansens are in combat, which means that they watch with Chuck from the pilot ready room, one on either side of him. None of them ever talks about it, but it’s a necessity, a little ritual for good luck like all pilots seem to have. Some things you do because you know it’ll eat at you later, even when it makes no sense. It’s better than having lucky underwear, at least, and so far it’s worked, or seemed to, because this time, like every time, Lucky 7 comes back victorious.

When they hit the mess hall afterwards, Gipsy’s whole crew is there to wish Chuck a happy birthday.

He blushes scarlet and threatens his co-pilot with violence if something like this ever happens again, but he’s crap at hiding how pleased he is. Raleigh ruffles his hair and Yancy pinches his cheeks (a little harder than necessary), but there’s cake and an excuse to celebrate, and that’s good enough for all of them.

His dad calls and Uncle Scott threatens to sing, or give a speech, whichever Raleigh thinks best. To Chuck’s surprise and gratitude, Yancy claps a hand over his brother’s mouth and pulls him away before he can decide which option would be the most embarrassing. 

It’s the best birthday he can remember.

******** 

They fall into a routine.

The life of a Shatterdome revolves around jaeger deployments. A jaeger is fighting, preparing to fight, or recovering from a fight, and her crews shift from priority to priority as it goes. Repairing or preparing takes up 99% of their time, and it’s much the same for the pilots, although they get significantly more downtime after a drop. They aren’t expected to get hands-on with the repairs, though the pilots know the status of their jaegers almost down to the minute. Raleigh’s never been particularly into mechanical things, but he knows his jaeger inside and out. Gipsy’s an extension of his own body in combat, and her readiness is his readiness.

Chuck’s different. Jaegers are, essentially, his thing in life, and he knows them inside and out. He spends a lot of time with Gipsy, hip deep in the guts of their mech. It doesn’t take long at all before he knows her as well as their Crew Chief, even though jaeger crews are assigned while the machines are still under construction and follow their machines through the whole process. Even at seventeen, Chuck absolutely knows what he’s talking about, and woe to the engineer who orders changes without his approval. He’s a teenage terror, and Raleigh backs him up every inch of the way.

Yancy, in contrast, is everywhere in the dome. As a Ranger, he’d been mostly convinced that LOCCENT revolved around the jaegers, and to a large extent that was true. Tendo, however, believes in knowing everything that’s going on, in much the same way that men believe in God. Aside from sitting at the center of LOCCENT’s data webs, Tendo also made friends easily, and they always seemed to come with stories to swap. He knows how things work and he knows how people work, and his knowledge of the Shatterdome and its systems is encyclopedic. Or freakish, depending on who you asked. Knowing a good thing when he saw one, Tendo encouraged Yancy to fill the same role. The elder Becket was sharp and personable and inquisitive, and the two of them basically got on like a house on fire.

A large part of Yancy’s job, therefore, involved catching up on whatever he didn’t know. He was the obvious liaison to the J-techs and the jaeger crews, and he also got on great with the air crews. 

It was interesting, and Yancy finds it gratifying to be one of the people who know things. People rely on him again.

He also sits a lot of watches in LOCCENT at odd hours of the day and night, coordinating everything from sewage repairs to Brutus and Brawler’s deployments.

It’s a rare thing for Yancy to be on the same schedule as his brother and Chuck, and even those two have different hours sometimes, depending on what’s going on.

The remaining tensions between the three of them fade – there just isn’t time to nurture a healthy grudge these days. The ghost drift stabilizes into a faint, warm feeling of connection between the brothers and between the co-pilots, with something even more tenuous between Yancy and Chuck. It’s most an awareness of that the others exist, with rare glimpses of emotions. They don’t talk about it much.

******* 

Yancy wakes up around noon one day. There’s no natural light in the room, but the time is projected on the far wall. He blinks sleepily and yawns, stretching. 

Chrome Brutus had taken a real beating before putting the last kaiju down, and the whole dome was in a hurry to get her up and back on the line. The remaining two jaeger crews have been pulled into the repairs, and both sets of pilots have been given crash courses in Brutus’ controls, just in case her own pilots don’t recover in time. It’s more cautious than really necessary, but the PPDC believes in whatever limited redundancy they can manage with the Jaeger Corps.

Yancy had been up for almost 30 hours before they cut him loose, and he’d crashed out as soon as he saw his bed. Sleep had never been so damned attractive.

He rolls over on his back and blinks at the ceiling for a change. He’s still heavy and slow with sleep, and it feels pretty fucking good, to be honest.

Speaking of which, hadn’t he been dreaming? Something…

Something about warm skin and hard muscles stretched out underneath him, lazy kisses and big, calloused hands stroking down his back as he moves, driving in relentlessly, a deep voice moaning and begging him for more.

Huh.

He’s not used to having sex dreams about men, but, okay. It’s not like he’s never, ever considered it. He slides a hand down under the covers, checking himself, and, yup, he’d come in his sleep. Must have been a really good dream.

He’s still laying there, sheets up to his chin, trying to remember more and idly thinking of jerking off when the man in bed with him snorts in his sleep and rolls over.

Everything in Yancy freezes. Down to the cellular level.

Because Jesus fucking _Christ_ , did he just have a wet dream while Raleigh was in the goddamned _bed_ with him?

Mortified, he does his best to ninja out of the bed, and he does a pretty good job, actually. He flees to the bathroom, but before he disappears, he looks back to make sure that Raleigh hasn’t woken up, because he knows he’s blushing hard enough to pass out. There’s zero chance of hiding any of this if Raleigh’s awake.

He’s lucky.

Except it wasn’t Raleigh next to him. It’s Chuck who’s sprawled across the bed, still in his jacket. His boots were kicked off on the way from the door, and he didn’t even make it all the way up on the bed, because his feet are sticking off the end and he’s about a foot shy of the pillow. He’s the very definition of a hard crash.

And goddamnit, why doesn’t that make it any better? He was sleeping with Chuck, who wasn’t even under the covers with him! It’s not like the three of them haven’t walked in or nearly walked in on each other in the shower about a dozen times now.

Chuck moans faintly in his sleep as he shifts, trying to get comfortable in the jacket that’s bunched up around his chest. The sound goes straight to Yancy’s dick.

It fails completely to make any of this any better. 

Yancy locks the door behind him and flips the shower on. He means to run the water cold until he forgets any of this ever happened. After about thirty seconds he dials it back over to hot water, because it’s so cold he’s surprised his balls haven’t frozen solid, and there’s gotta be a better way than this.

 _Self-control, Becket_ , he thinks to himself, drawing in a deep breath. _Hot water and self-control._

Fuck.

*******

Yancy may have been traumatized, but it becomes clear that Chuck wasn’t. It’s actually never clear whether he realized Yancy was in the bed at all that time. Afterwards, though, there’s a new level of casualness in their quarters, and even though no one talks about it, it doesn’t seem to bother anyone. Ghosting has a tendency to smooth things over anyway.

So when Yancy comes home to find both Raleigh and Chuck sleeping noisily on the big bed together, he’s not really surprised, and takes the single. Most of the time it’s still him and Raleigh. 

The only time it’s a problem is when he finds Chuck in the bed and Raleigh in the lower bunk. Crawling in with Chuck is a little… weird, but he’s tired.

They don’t argue about it.

******* 

“Are you shitting me?”

Chuck raises an eyebrow and then takes his bomber jacket off one sleeve at a time, making a show of it. Then he pulls his shirt off over his head, and Yancy wonders briefly if he’s dreaming this. Chuck’s been putting on muscle, and he’s got flat abs and broad shoulders and Yancy kind of wants to lick him.

_No. Focus._

Chuck is fresh back from 72 hours of leave with his dad and Uncle Scott. They met up in Hawaii, which is close enough to halfway between Anchorage and Australia not to matter. Hawaii hasn’t been hit by kaiju, but everybody expects it will at some point, and the place is sort of vibrating with anxiety. It’s also even more packed with military than it used to be, and the combination gives everything there a kind of wild edge.

The Hansens had linked up at the airport and descended on Honolulu like… there wasn’t really a simile for Australian jaeger pilots on the rampage. The elder Hansens, in short, had not set a good example for the youngest one.

Chuck came back with a hangover he hadn’t managed to sleep off on the plane, a broken toe, a possible lawsuit, and, reportedly, a tattoo. 

He was also being sought by the Honolulu PD for questioning in a case of suspected arson, but he’d handed all that off to Legal. It would make for a good story later, but right now the burning question was whether Herc had really taken Chuck out to get his first tattoo or not.

The Beckets have chosen not to believe him, because teasing Chuck is their favorite sport. They know exactly when to stop before there’s hard feelings, so it’s still entertaining. 

Raleigh says he can’t believe Herc would take his underage son to get a tattoo. Yancy doesn’t think he can say that and match Raleigh’s poker face, so he just goes for flat-out denial.

And Chuck… had called their bluff this time. So here they are in the mess hall, and Chuck’s stripped his shirt off right in front of them and half the Shatterdome. Then he turns around, and damned if he isn’t telling the truth. The brat went out and got Gipsy’s winged shield logo inked across his back, from shoulder blade to shoulder blade. Wherever Herc took him, they did it right: it’s dimensional and vivid, with great line work and outstanding color. The red star in the middle has been shrunk somewhat and blue stars for Australia’s flag have been added above it.

They’re at the ranger tables, but Gipsy’s corner of the mess hall is right there, and her crew applauds and whistles. Chuck blushes, but he also holds his arms out and turns around in a circle, letting anyone who wants a look get it.

Jesus.

Yancy glances over at his brother. Raleigh’s laughing but it doesn’t really last that long before he’s back to picking at his food, a smile lingering on his lips. It’s a little bit off, but doesn’t seem to be a big deal. Before he goes back to his own lunch, though, Yancy catches Raleigh glancing up at his co-pilot for a moment, eyes travelling over Chuck’s chest and back, and there’s a little bit of heat in the drift, quickly smothered. 

Huh.

Raleigh notices Yancy watching him and blushes.

Okay, then. Suspicion confirmed.

Yancy pulls his chicken into threads, considering things. If both Beckets are slightly – just slightly – crushing on their underage roommate, it not really that big a deal, is it? 

He doesn’t think it is. 

Seems pretty natural, actually. Chuck may be a little shit, but he’s handsome and smart and charismatic as hell without putting any thought into it.

Neither one of them would ever make a move until Chuck’s past the magic 18th birthday anyway, and in the middle of a war, that seems like years away. 

Nothing to worry about, then.

******** 

Raleigh turns up about four days later with his arm bandaged. He doesn’t even pretend it’s not a tattoo, and he unwraps it proudly.

“Holy shit, Rals.”

It’s not done, and it will take more visits to finish, but it’s already clear what it’s going to be: from the wrist to the elbow, all the way around, it will look like the skin of Raleigh’s right arm has been peeled back to reveal Gipsy’s arm underneath, all bright steel and hard lines. 

“That’s fucking ace,” Chuck says, eyes bright.

The co-pilots and new tattoo aficionados trade stories and compare their experiences for several minutes before, inevitably, they turn to look at Yancy, who’s leaning back in his chair and listening to them.

“Not a chance,” he says, grinning. “I’m not getting your jaeger stamped on my lily white skin.”

“Doesn’t have to be Gipsy,” Chuck teases.

“Doesn’t matter. Why spoil perfection?”

Raleigh rolls his eyes. “Whatever. Turn in your man-card, dude.”

Yancy throws a boot at his head.

 

******* 

Yancy gets transferred to the LOCCENT’s primary crew within a couple of months, which earns him resentment from those who’ve been in line longer. He knows he’s earned it, so the loose talk about favoritism towards a Ranger doesn’t bother him. It turns out that it bothers Chuck, though. 

One night at dinner, to everyone’s surprise, possibly including his own, Chuck drags two of the chief offenders off to a corner of the mess hall, where he very quietly explains a few things to them about how shit-talking Yancy Becket is a poor life decision for them. He’s smiling the whole time, flashing the dimples and everything, but no one is under any illusions about the gist of what he’s saying. His victims practically flee as soon as he walks away.

“Do I wanna know what you just did?” Yancy asks when Chucks comes back to sit at their table. Yancy’s apparently fascinated by the spaghetti on his plate, and he doesn’t look up.

“No,” Raleigh and Chuck say simultaneously.

“Fair enough,” Yancy says, nodding sagely. He can feel Raleigh’s pride and amusement like he’s sitting in front of a heater or something, and he doesn’t even need to look up to know that the expression on Chuck’s face is fierce. Christ.

It’s astonishingly hard not to grin like an idiot.

Aside from the anonymous complaints filed against Chuck for threats of personal violence, that’s the end of it. 

It’s also the beginning.


	5. In Which Time Flies Whether You're Having Fun or Not

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Epic fights, deep and abiding embarrassment, Rangers being clueless, a surprise kiss, and the cover of Rolling Stone.

Whenever a jaeger is deployed, the nearest Shatterdome LOCCENT takes control, but their home LOCCENT remains online and involved. After a brief and surprisingly bitter verbal fight between the Lima and LA domes, LA assumed responsibility for Gipsy Danger and the kaiju that looks to hit Guatemala. In Anchorage, the LOCCENT prime crew has been on station since Command realized that Gipsy was the nearest fully operational jaeger and the deployment got underway.

The prime crew is always on duty when one of the Anchorage jaegers goes out. Getting a seat on that crew is a highly coveted position, and it’s one Yancy’s had for a while now, except for Gipsy’s drops, when he sits in the back as an observer. Last night, however, he arrived with the rest of the crew, took the seat he occupies on every other deployment, and refused to give it up. Tendo just waved the other officer off in the scramble of the crew change, and when the Marshal arrived, he either didn’t say anything about it, or Yancy was too deep into coordinating Gipsy’s transfer to the transport barge to notice. Either way, he stayed at his duty station.

He was prepared to act as if he didn’t realize that Medical still hadn’t cleared him for Gipsy’s drops, as flimsy an excuse as that might be, but no one really brought it up. Raleigh and Chuck must have recognized his voice over the comms, but they didn’t acknowledge it.

There was just no fucking way he was going to keep sitting out Gipsy’s deployments. It wasn’t even a matter of personal pride. That was Raleigh out there, and Chuck, and Yancy was going to look after them the best he could. It’s his job, goddamnit.

Things go about as well as can be expected, considering they’re transferring a giant mecha to a giant barge just off shore, then sending the whole thing across the north Pacific in shit weather. It’s a fucking miracle than they haven’t lost a barge yet, but they’re the best option so far, speed and fuel-wise, for getting a jaeger into range on these long hauls. When it’s clear exactly where the kaiju’s heading, Jumphawks will bring them in – they’re fast but don’t have the fuel for long-range hauls. Once they’re dropped, the jaeger usually runs for it.

The transports get Gipsy to Guatemala with the kaiju still well out to sea, and by the time the thing hits the Miracle Mile outside Puerto San Jose, the jaeger’s waiting for it.

Yancy stares at the thing on his screens. There’s a debate going on right now about whether the kaiju are just individuals from whatever species is on the other side of the Breach, or whether they’re being designed and sent through specifically as weapons. Yancy’s on the ‘designed’ side, but he can’t imagine what would have designed this one, or why.

It’s built around a central axis like the rest of them, but where the other kaiju have been bilaterally symmetrical, this one isn’t. It’s got extra legs on one side, a series of three small arms with hands sticking out of its back, and the main arms in front are different lengths. There’s three jaws in three different sizes, and Yancy’s not sure, but he doesn’t think they close all the way. The kaiju looks like it was half-assed, frankly, and if it wasn’t covered with spikes and full of teeth, it might even be laughable.

Being about 300 feet tall and bent on killing everything it sees sort of takes the humor out of it too.

Even Gipsy takes a moment to stare before charging into battle.

What happens next is pretty much textbook combat, so much so that video of the fight will be shown at the Academy by next week. Gipsy Danger intercepts, fires ranged weapons, moves to block when the kaiju tries to get around her, grapples, and empties a clip right into the thing’s head. It’s almost anticlimactic, if anything about a fight between a giant monster and a giant mech can be anticlimactic.

Gipsy pulls the monster’s corpse farther out to sea, where the containment fleet is waiting, submerges to rinse off the Blue, and waits for extraction. Puerto San Jose doesn’t have the facilities to take care of a jaeger, and since there’s almost no battle damage, Gipsy’s brought back home.

*******

J-Tech and Medical leap on all three Rangers as soon as they’re off-duty, but they can’t find anything particularly troubling. They all report the same general feelings of boredom, excitement, and relief. Although Yancy hadn’t been hooked up to any machines, the other two had been, and their drift records don’t show anything out of the usual. J-Tech is suspicious, though, and the next day Yancy finds himself dragged into a meeting with senior members of the pons system research and development team, plus doctors he doesn’t even know, and a handful of the PPDC’s top brass over video.

The consensus from above is that Yancy should be officially reprimanded for working Gipsy’s drop, if not pulled off the LOCCENT team altogether. They just can’t risk something happening to disrupt Raleigh and Chuck’s drift.

Yancy shoots a glance at the doctors he knows, and he can see that many of them don’t agree. He can also see that none of them are going to speak up for him, and he guesses that they’re not saying anything because they can’t prove it. Drift science is frustratingly inexact, and people who’ve never experienced it treat it like some kind of voodoo, even the ones who spend their time researching it.

Yancy, on the other hand, knows exactly what he’s talking about.

“Have any of you actually drifted?” he asks suddenly, interrupting them all. “Anyone at all?”

There’s a silence before one of the talking heads on screen starts to say something. “Ranger Becket, I’m not sure that’s import—“

Yancy cuts him off. “I’ve got over a hundred hours of drift time logged with my brother, who is one of the pilots you think I’m going recklessly endanger to further my career. Do you really think I wouldn’t have instantly removed myself if I had experienced anything that would have interfered with their drift? Do you think I wouldn’t have recognized it?”

“With so much riding on this, we have to be sure –“

“I’m sure, and Raleigh’s sure, and Chuck’s sure. Millions of dollars have been invested in making sure we know what we’re talking about. There’s no data that contradicts us. You’re going to have to trust us on this one.”

They’re not going to; despite the wisdom of his words, they’ve already made their decision. He knows it, but Yancy can’t even begin to let it go. He can feel the tremors in his hand and his knee, and he clasps his hands tightly under the table. This is not the time to remind them that he’s not 100% and probably won’t ever be again. They’re working on how to phrase things; he can see it in their faces.

Stacker Pentecost’s voice breaks through the silence.

“I agree. I have a request from Commander Choi, LOCCENT Chief of Operations, to have Ranger Becket cleared for full duty, and I see no reason to deny it. The current situation places an unnecessary burden on the LOCCENT crews and undermines Ranger Becket’s authority, which is unacceptable in a combat situation.”

“Marshal –“

“Do we have any objections based on facts instead of excessive caution?”

“No objections,” the new head of the Icebox’s physical therapy team chirps. Yancy catches the scowl her boss shoots her way and resists the urge to grin at her. She’s a tiny woman who spends her spare time in the gym, destroying those ignorant enough to step in the ring with her, and her no-nonsense approach to getting her patients back to fighting form meant Yancy got along with her just fine.

“Well, then, gentlemen, I suggest we allow Commander Choi to make the decisions in his own department. Now, if you’ll excuse me, we have an emergency deployment drill scheduled for this afternoon that requires our attention.”

The Marshal levels a look at all of them, nods, and then stands up, turning on his heel to leave. The Icebox staff, including Yancy, takes that as their cue and files out behind him. If the people conferenced in remotely had anything to say about it, no one paid any attention.

*******

Raleigh and Chuck are waiting in the hall outside, wearing identical scowls. The way they straighten up from where they’d been leaning against the wall is also identical, and Yancy would’ve laughed if he hadn’t felt anger and concern from them sweeping over the drift.

“It’s okay,” he says, reaching out to them, grasping his brother’s arm and Chuck’s shoulder. “The Marshal had my back, and it’s up to Tendo now.”

Raleigh’s blue eyes are still crinkled with worry, and Chuck’s anger would be obvious even if their heads weren’t twisted together half the time. It strikes Yancy suddenly how young they are, despite everything. Chuck’s seventeen and Raleigh’s turning twenty in a couple of months, and since the stroke, Yancy feels like an old man. He’s mostly back in shape, but the experience has aged him inside, he knows. And he’s always been Raleigh’s big brother. It’s not hard to extend that a little to the Australian menace.

Yancy pulls them both into his arms and holds on, and by some small miracle, they let him. In fact, he feels their arms snake around his waist and pull him in, and they stay like that for a minute, the ghost drift humming contentedly between them. It’s strong between him and Raleigh, even after all this time, and strong between the co-pilots, but the intermittent thread between himself and Chuck feels like it might be bright with happiness right now. Maybe.

He doesn’t understand it. This thing they have should not exist, and sometimes he can pretend it doesn’t, but here it is.

He doesn’t think he can live without this anymore.

“You know, Becket boys, by which I mean all three of you,” Tendo says, appearing out of nowhere just over Yancy’s shoulder, “you really shouldn’t do this in public if you want to look like normal military guys.”

They break up to talk to him, but neither Becket quite manages to let go of Chuck.

“Fuck off, Choi,” the Australian in question growls, but there’s not even a speck of real venom in it, and Tendo knows it.

“I’d say it wouldn’t help Yancy keep his job either, except that’s in my hands now.” Tendo rubs the aforementioned hands together like he’s gloating. If Yancy had the slightest doubt, which he didn’t, it’s gone now.

“And what are you going to do?” Raleigh asks, his usual good humor missing. Yancy can’t believe he doesn’t get it, but then his little brother’s in full-on protective mode. Raleigh likes Tendo, but the way he’s glaring, with his mouth pressed into a thin line, is pretty intense.

“I’m going to kick his ass if he misses your next deployment,” Tendo says good-naturedly. Slapping Yancy’s back, he adds “Go get some sleep like a normal person, will ya? I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Sure thing, man.”

Yancy doesn’t say thanks, because he and Tendo aren’t that way. Tendo knows it just as well as he does, though.

Raleigh squeezes all the air out of him in celebration.

*******

The thing is, they’re all lying.

To themselves and everybody else

They _had_ felt something during the drop. They always did. Distance did nothing to erase their basic sense of each other’s existence. Yancy hadn’t gotten any solid sense of their feelings, but he thinks he would have known if something bad had happened.

Not that it was going to. Ever.

But if it did, he’d know, for sure.

********

 

Yancy is officially cleared to work Gipsy’s drops.

Chuck’s complaint that he already has to listen to enough of Yancy’s bitching is taken seriously only by those who don’t know him.

When November rolls around, both Yancy and Herc have birthdays. The parties are celebrated together, over a wide-screen video link in the pilot’s lounge of both Sydney and Anchorage. Celebrations are taken seriously in the Shatterdomes, and any excuse for a party is leaped on with enthusiasm. This time they’ve crowded more than a hundred people into each room, and although they’re on different continents, in different time zones, the video screens almost make them look connected. People yell at each other on screen, the music’s synched in both places, and when the time comes, both Rangers are dragged forward by their brothers for a round of embarrassing speeches in front of both crowds.

And then Scott makes everything worse, because that’s his super power. “Behold!” he yells, arms held out dramatically to the sides. To Yancy and Herc’s astonishment and horror, the sides of the screen dissolve into a slide show of pictures of the birthday boys, starting with Yancy’s first grade school picture and an exceedingly awkward teenage Herc in a rugby uniform, complete with bloody nose. That’s followed by Yancy scowling at the camera after Raleigh accidentally knocked two of his front teeth out in middle school, Herc in a tux so hideous it could only have been for prom, and a series of them generally looking goofy, including a pair of pictures of them sleeping with their mouths open. It doesn’t get any better from there, and the crowds roar.

Yancy whirls around to find Chuck and Raleigh laughing, and he sighs heavily, because now he’s going to have to murder both of them.

“Herc, I’m sorry, but your son’s a dead man,” he says, trying to look sorrowful.

“Have at it,” Herc grunts. He already has Scott in a headlock.

Chuck squawks in outrage that it’s all Raleigh’s fault, but Raleigh knows Yancy better than he does. Gipsy Danger’s pilots flee the scene.

Yancy’s perfectly okay with that. They have to come home sometime.

*******

In December, Raleigh turns twenty. Never above a little petty revenge, Yancy provides the party with a short video of his brother singing in the shower. It doesn’t show any naughty bits, but the off-key rendition of “Wrecking Ball” does end with a half-naked Raleigh trying to eviscerate Yancy before he can get the door closed. Unfortunately for Chuck, he’s clearly audible in the background laughing his ass off.

“It’s all good. I’ve got months to plan my revenge,” Raleigh tells his partner with a bright smile, hugging him around the neck just a little too hard for comfort.

*******

That February, a request from _Rolling Stone_ is relayed through the PPDC’s PR department for an interview with Ranger Becket.

Ranger Yancy Becket.

He groans, expecting another pity piece on how he was almost a jaeger pilot and what a tragedy it is that he’s not.

The Marshal approves it.

Fuck.

*******

The article, which came with a cover shot, turns out to be an enormous success, and Yancy finds that he doesn’t actually hate it. The “poor, broken Yancy” thing only makes an appearance so it can be dismissed. The parts that are usually ignored – how he recovered from a stroke and made a new career for himself – are the ones in focus here. Their living arrangements are never discussed, but he does get a chance to talk about dealing with Gipsy’s pilots, and what it’s like to be in LOCCENT when they go to war. They ask him what he thinks about the new “Wall of Life” idea some people have been talking about, and he scoffs at the idea, calling it completely batshit.

All in all, it’s a pretty solid piece.

Chuck covers their bathroom walls and ceiling with copies of the cover picture, “for inspiration”. Yancy grins down at them, wearing his dress uniform and sporting perfect hair, every time they need to use it.

Yancy lines Chuck’s wardrobe with the picture, and then does the same to the underside of the top bunk “for inspiration”. Since Chuck usually ends up sleeping on the bottom bunk, he gets the idea immediately, and to Yancy’s delight, blushes a perfect red.

The little bastard’s adorable like that.

*******

A long time, in jaeger terms, passes in peace. None of the kaiju head anywhere near Anchorage’s zone of operations, and Gipsy only goes out for training runs, or to pose for propaganda shots.

It drives Chuck crazy. It’s not just that he misses the action, although he does. Mostly the problem is that he doesn’t deal with suspense well, and every time an alarm goes off all the pilots suit up and wait in the ready room until the kaiju’s course is determined and their sector is taken off alert. There’s no chance of sleeping after that, so they wait and watch other jaegers go into battle. Yancy will join them when he can, usually falling asleep against one of them on the couch until the fight actually starts.

If anyone thinks it’s odd, no one says anything, even when Chuck throws an arm around Yancy’s shoulders, resolutely not looking at his co-pilot as his brother snuggles into him.

No one knows if it’s really Tendo’s fault that Chuck starts falling under the general label of “Becket”, but people learn fast not to call him that to his face. Still, people need something to call the three of them by, because they’re increasingly a unit now. A pack, maybe. A family of three partly unrelated men, connected by blood and the drift.

The rumors start around then. The ghost drift between them is protected information, but some people have begun to notice that there’s something kind of… off with them. With Chuck and Raleigh it’s expected, because pilot pairs are their own breed. The subtle synchronicity between them, in the way they move and the way they talk, is practically a badge of successful pilots. The similarity between Raleigh and Yancy isn’t really unexpected either, since they’re brothers on top of being drift compatible. Chuck and Yancy is a little less explicable, but they’re roommates, aren’t they?

It’s in the way the three of them sync up when they’re together, finishing each other’s sentences, laughing at the same time, answering questions before they’re asked. It’s in the way Yancy and Chuck have had one fight in the last several months, which they take up and put back down when it’s convenient, spinning it out and wrangling over it until it has nothing to do with what it started over. Sometimes it’s sharp and the words turn harsh, but none of the three of them mistake it for anything more than what it is. It’s like a gas flare, burning off extra pressure, and Raleigh doesn’t mind it, because it leaves no scars behind.

The three of them have somehow slipped over the edge into territory marked “odd” without any one thing putting them there.

Not that it really draws that much attention.

Rangers are strange creatures.

And there’s a war on.

*******

Everything about this war is new, from the enemy to the weapons to the people fighting it. It’s inevitable that new and specific folklore has been created for it. Some of it’s true, like the ghost drifts. The jaegers have their own set of stories, and some of those are also true.

At night, jaegers sometimes move on their own, shifting slightly in their bays. A hand will briefly raise and lower, stances may shift, or systems flicker on and off. People had been reluctant to believe it, but it was eventually captured on video. An official maintenance protocol letter has gone out and all the crews have been briefed on pilot downtime safety precautions. The cause is left vague, but the crews develop their own theories. There’s no logical way for it to happen, but the jaegers will move now and then in their pilots’ sleep, echoing their dreams or nightmares.

One night, Raleigh wakes up from an exhausted sleep to find Yancy leaning over him, shaking him gently. He’s unbelievably groggy, but the sweet smile he gives Yancy takes his brother’s breath away. Jesus Christ, Raleigh can be fucking beautiful sometimes.

Raleigh makes a pleased, almost purring sound in his throat as his eyes slip closed again, and before Yancy can react, Raleigh pulls him down into the bed, rolling them so that he can slip an arm and a heavy leg over Yancy’s, snuggling him close.

“Mmm… Yance,” Raleigh mumbles, inhaling the scent of Yancy’s hair and kissing his temple. He lazily rolls his body against his brother, before sighing and falling back asleep.

Yancy lies there, a little stunned, and stares at the ceiling as he feels Raleigh’s heavy, warm weight relaxing on top of him. That… wasn’t what he expected. Sure, he and Raleigh sleep in the same bed most of the time, but it’s not like this. They may end up next to each other, but they don’t… cuddle. They don’t kiss at all, ever. They never, ever, _ever_ roll their lazy erections into their brother’s hips before falling asleep on him. They’ve always been close, and their heads are wired into each other, and they may have, um, tiny little crushes on the same guy, but that doesn’t explain _this_.

Jesus fucking Christ.

The thing is that he doesn’t want to move, to be honest. He wants to stay here, wrapped up in Raleigh, feeling him close and listening to the soft rhythm of his breathing. It’s good, as comfortable as anything he’s ever felt. The idea of just letting himself go like that is almost overwhelmingly attractive, and he feels his eyelids go heavy, fluttering with the urge to sleep.

Then Chuck, over on the bottom bunk, makes the faintest moan, and Yancy remembers why he’s here.

“Raleigh.”

Not a twitch.

Goddamnit. The orders were not to startle either of them awake, in case Gipsy somehow mirrors it. That’s why he was sent to get them up, instead of someone just setting off the kaiju alarm in their quarters or something.

“ _Raleigh!_ ” he whispers urgently. That got him a faint groan and another roll of those hips, and _fuck this_ , Raleigh needs to get up right now. Yancy wriggles his arm free enough to reach, and then pinches him, twisting a little.

“Hey!”

“Wake up!” Yancy hisses into his ear. Raleigh makes a sort of flailing motion and Yancy’s unbelievably tempted to shove his ass right off the bed. “Wake the hell up, asshole!”

Looking wounded and betrayed and adorable at the same time in a way only Raleigh can ever manage, the younger Becket sits up and glares at him. “The fuck, Yance?” he grumbles.

“You need to wake Hansen up,” Yancey says, suddenly aware of how their legs are still entwined. “Get off me.”

“Why didn’t you just do it?”

“He’s not my co-pilot.”

Raleigh stared at him, deeply unimpressed.

“Look, Gipsy’s been moving around in her bay, not a lot, but the crew thinks she’s syncing up with one of you in your sleep.”

“That’s not—“

“Yeah, yeah.”

“Why didn’t you wake him up?”

Chuck, bless his heart, takes that moment to roll over in his bed, a long sigh slipping from his mouth as he sprawled on his back. Both Beckets turn to stare, and Chuck sort of… writhes slowly in his sleep, his movements heavy and sensual. The tiny sound he makes is, honestly, sexy as hell, and the brothers exchange stunned glances at each other.

“Jesus Christ,” Raleigh says softly.

“The bunk is still covered with pictures of me,” Yancy hisses, pointing up at the copies of the Rolling Stone cover. “There’s no fucking way I’m the one who’s waking him up.”

“Afraid he’ll molest you?” Raleigh grins slyly. “Or afraid that he won’t?”

“Wake him up, asshole!” Yancy splutters.

“Fine, fine,” Raleigh grumbles, reaching out and grabbing his co-pilot by the shoulder. “Up and at ‘em, Hansen.”

“Don’t startle him!” Yancy hisses, but despite Raleigh yanking his hand away like he’d been burned, things were already underway.

Chuck arches and sighs, mumbling something neither of them could catch, and then it looks very much like he comes in his sleep with a soft, sweet sound in the back of his throat.

Yancy shoots to his feet, because the stupid ghost drift has kicked up and he can feel his brother’s lust and Chuck’s satisfaction burn along his nerves; he’s hard enough to drill diamonds, and it’s a long motherfucking walk back to LOCCENT.

“Wake. Him. Up,” he says, voice astonishingly calm as he backs towards the door, hands held up like he can ward this whole thing off.

Raleigh shoots him a helpless look, and then solves the problem the very first way that springs to mind.

Yancy watches his brother lean down and kiss Chuck as softly and tenderly as he can. After a moment, Chuck’s mouth moves under his, opening slightly, and Raleigh obligingly slips his tongue inside, without a thought. It’s as natural as breathing, and some part of him wonders why they haven’t done this before. When Chuck’s eyes flutter open, neither of them moves away for a long moment, and then they part easily.

“Hi,” Chuck whispers, smiling softly.

“Hi,” Raleigh whispers back, and for a moment it looks very much like they’re going to kiss again, because that’s where all the logic of the moment leads them, but then Raleigh’s brain whirs back to life.

“So tell ‘em we’re all good, Yance, okay?” the younger blond says, turning to get his brother’s approval.

But Yancy’s gone, and the door’s still slowly swinging shut behind him, and somehow all the newfound warmth in Raleigh’s hearth vanishes as the smile disappears from his lips.

“What’s wrong? Is he okay?” Chuck asks, sitting up, frowning. He feels kind of odd, and… Christ… what the hell?

Raleigh gets up to look outside the door, even though he’s sure Yancy’s already gone. He can feel something really, really strange through the drift, something he can’t put a name to, but it’s almost immediately overwhelmed by the hot flush of embarrassment from Chuck. The bathroom door slams before he can even turn around.

Ah.

That would be his co-pilot realizing the Becket brothers just watched him come in his sleep.

Goddamnit.

He calls down to see if Gipsy’s okay, and the crew chief teases him a little, because he’s the pilot you can do that with, but Raleigh’s heart isn’t in it. At all.

What the hell just happened?

It honestly doesn’t occur to him until much later to wonder why he kissed Chuck in the first place. It had just seemed like the thing to do.

 

*******

Yancy is fine later, when they meet up for what was either breakfast or dinner, depending on your shift. He looks fine, and he sounds fine. They eat together whenever they can, and he slides in across the table from them just like always. Everything is fine. He didn’t jerk off in the shower half an hour ago to thoughts of his brother and Chuck kissing, because he wouldn’t do that. If he _had_ somehow done that, he certainly had not come all over the shower wall wondering how the two of them had turned out to be so fucking hot. And if he had somehow also done _that_ , then he couldn’t possibly have leaned against the wall afterwards, trembling with the aftershocks of a truly epic orgasm, and wondered how he was going to live with the two of them now. See? Yancy is perfectly fine.

Chuck is also fine. He’s not at all embarrassed about waking up from a wet dream _about the Beckets_ to find out that both Beckets had been watching him the whole time. He’s not confused and excited and a little bit angry and something else he can’t quite identify because Raleigh – Raleigh! – had kissed him and it was even better than it was in the dream. He’s not at all suspicious that the hot wash of desire he felt about half an hour ago had something to do with the Beckets, and he doesn’t still have an erection at this very moment because of it. He doesn’t want to shake his co-pilot until he stops smiling like that. He doesn’t want to call his fucking dad. Not at all. Chuck Hansen is perfectly fine.

Raleigh actually _is_ fine. Sure, he kissed Chuck last night, and that was weird, but it was also pretty good, and he doesn’t regret it. Yancy and Chuck seem to be dealing with their shit, so that’s good too, because he sure as hell doesn’t know how to handle things like this. He loves these guys, and he knows that their life isn’t normal, but he can’t bring himself to regret that either. Even though everything about being a jaeger pilot is dangerous, it’s brought him this, and he wouldn’t give it up even if he could. He’s always had Yancy, but now he has Chuck too, and they all three have the drift, and it’s the closest family he’s had since the day his mother told them she was sick. Since the day their dad threw them away like trash. This… this thing they have can’t be broken. The sun rises and sets on the three of them, and he wouldn’t have it any other way.

Besides, he had a first-class wank a little while ago, as Chuck would have put it, and that always puts him in a good mood.

So, yeah, aside from the giant monsters attacking the Earth, everything in Raleigh Becket’s world is doing fine.

 

*******

 

“We were here as kids once,” Raleigh says conversationally. “Couple of days while we were on our way somewhere else. Yancy threw up on the tram at the animal park and tried to blame me for it.”

“Sounds like him.”

Gipsy’s in the LA LOCCENT’s playground again, so Yancy refrains from reminding Raleigh that (a) it had worked, and (b) it had been revenge for… something he can’t remember at the moment.

Whatever.

Gipsy Danger is on approach to San Diego, having been deployed to deal with kaiju Clawhook, which looks like a velociraptor from the Jurassic Park movies from the knees down. From there up it kind of looks like Cthulhu, which means that the kaiju cult shitheads will be getting an extra Elder God bang for their buck from this one.

Clawhook is in the process of destroying a national monument when Gipsy arrives. Maybe it has a thing against lighthouses, since detouring to smash the old one on Point Loma means it missed the harbor entrance proper by at least a mile. Of course, it only has to climb down the far side of the peninsula to be back on track, so Gipsy is going to do her best to get in the way.

Clawhook pauses at the top of the peninsula to roar at the city spread out in front of it, because from there it can see the navy base, the airport, downtown, and the huge curve of San Diego proper, and it absolutely means to wreck all of it. The city’s only answer is the wail of civil defense sirens and the distant klaxons of the ships who had gotten underway before the kaiju arrived and were now out of the bay, waiting to see if there was anything they could do to help. The cloudy skies are full of aircraft, military and civilian, but Clawhook pays them no mind.

It roars again, defiant, and doesn’t seem to notice the jaeger touching down north of it along the peninsula.

Gipsy’s feet skid a little when she’s detached, gouging up lines of tombstones, and Chuck winces. “You set us down in a bloody _graveyard_? What the fuck?”

All around them stretches a national cemetery, perfect white headstones against a perfect green lawn, and Raleigh grimaces, showing his teeth. It’s the flattest, most even spot on the peninsula, and he remembers it from when he was a boy and his head was full of war stories.

“Veteran’s cemetery,” he says. “Gonna guess they won’t mind us making a mess if we take that fucker out.”

“Permission to engage granted,” is all LA has to say about it, and Gipsy is sprinting down the road toward the kaiju before either pilot remembers to verbally acknowledge the order.

Clawhook is mid-roar when Gipsy tackles it, sending them both about five hundred feet down into the water. The channel’s deep there for the massive ships the Navy sends through, but neither combatant disappears completely. The kaiju climbs out almost immediately, claws digging massive holes in the concrete and stone riprap edging the channel.

Gipsy Danger follows, using the kaiju itself as a ladder and climbing up to wait for it on land. If that’s where Clawhook wants to die, then she’ll accommodate it.

As soon as it’s clear, the kaiju demonstrates what the hooked talons are for, launching itself feet first. Metal screams as the claws tear across Gipsy’s torso and leg, gouging plates free as showers of sparks hit the ground.

“Left leg compromised,” Chuck snaps, gritting his teeth against the feedback. “Hip ROM down 20%.”

Losing part of their range of movement is something they’ve trained for, and they compensate immediately, but this is the first serious damage they’ve taken in combat, and it pisses them off. What they should do at this point is create enough space to charge the plasma caster and fire, but they close instead, crushing bones with their fists.

Yancy feels their rage like a punch in the gut, and he clenches down on it, trying to steady them. He doesn’t even know if it works this way – he doesn’t know how it works at all – but he throws himself into it, trying to calm and focus himself the way he was taught in therapy, when anger at his own body made him want to scream. He pulls his hands away from the keyboard and stares blankly at his screen, pushing at nothing as hard as he can, hoping it works.

In San Diego, Gipsy is clipped across her right leg and Raleigh gets his first scar, all in one quick motion, and Clawhook scrambles away again, Blue spraying from a dozen wounds.

Raleigh cries out, but he doesn’t lose focus. Chuck is there in his head, holding him up, and Gipsy starts to move in again, already compensating for the damage and moving easier than she has any right to.

“Charging plasma caster,” Chuck says suddenly, and Raleigh feels something flood the drift between them, something cold against the heat of his anger. It’s not… He…

“Charging.” Raleigh confirms. “Withdrawing to range.”

Clawhook watches them, its head hanging low. The awkwardness in Gipsy’s gait does not go unnoticed, and the wing-like flaps behind the kaiju’s head flutter slowly.

The two of them seem to stare each other down, the jaeger standing between the city and the kaiju, power building up in one hand as the weapon charges.

It only takes a few more seconds.

Clawhook takes the full clip in mid-air, diving in to take Gipsy’s legs out completely. Gipsy empties everything into the lower torso and dodges backward, but the kaiju’s forward momentum is greater, and it only stops at arm’s length, steam rising from the gaping hole in its body. A trail of what were probably once innards are now splattered along the ground behind it.

Two months from now, a currently unknown doctor of biology named Newton Geiszler will draw the attention of the PPDC with a paper on comparative biology between kaiju and terrestrial life forms. There will be an entire chapter on the Clawhook/Gipsy Danger fight, and how it could be that, despite the vast differences in biology, everyone watching innately recognizes that what happens next isn’t a roar or an attack or just the last gasp of a dying monster. The understanding is unanimous.

With an enormous shudder, Clawhook pukes all over the front of Gipsy Danger.

There’s a moment of quiet as everyone in the world, including Raleigh, Chuck, and Clawhook itself, processes the sight of the jaeger dripping electric blue kaiju vomit. A glob of something the size of a minivan dangles from Gipsy’s shoulder before oozing free and splashing to the ground at her feet.

The single punch Gipsy retaliates with knocks the kaiju back about 300 hundred feet and ends the fight, and it’s so decisive, so obviously offended, that cheers break out in front of televisions across the planet.

They don’t laugh in either monitoring LOCCENT, though, because they still have a jaeger deployed. There’ll be time for it later.

Gipsy steps back into the water to wash off the corrosive Blue, following Icebox procedures, but there’s an objection from Los Angeles. They want Clawhook pulled out to sea first. There’s several minutes of argument that leaves the jaeger just standing there, only up to her knees in water, awkwardly waiting for the go ahead.

In Alaska, a light starts flashing on both Tendo and Yancy’s screens, and a silent look goes from one to the other to the Marshal, who immediately orders Gipsy to submerge. LA drops all its objections, but Raleigh and Chuck are already in motion before the second light appears.

Hull breach.

Clawhook’s parting gift is eating through Gipsy’s armor at the damage points.

Chuck makes a strangled noise as the feedback burns into his skin, and Raleigh echoes it, feeling the burns spread across his hips and back.

With surprising grace, Gipsy runs as well as she can, seeking deeper water, and dives, hoping the impact will remove most of the kaiju Blue from her front.

Yancy already has the Jumphawks in motion before the alarms go off. There’s flooding in Gipsy’s hip and torso area, and standing upright is suddenly a struggle no one was expecting. The water would only come to her waist if she could plant her feet on the sea floor, but the leg on Chuck’s side spasms as water crashes in, destroying linkages it wouldn’t have been able to reach if Clawhook’s talons hadn’t opened the way.

With an awkward heave, the jaeger gets her head and shoulders clear, and that’s all the recovery crews need. In twenty minutes the Jumphawks have their lines attached, and she’s being pulled upright. Water cascades out of the holes in her hull, and that’s what they focus on in the Shatterdomes.

The public just celebrates another win for Gipsy Danger.

“How’re they doing?” Tendo asks softly, his voice audible only in Yancy’s headset.

“Mostly pissed off,” Yancy answers immediately, in no doubt. “Get the medics to pull them out soon, though.”

He doesn’t have to explain circuit burns to Tendo, or the relief that he can’t quite keep out of his voice.

 

*******

 

Clawhook leaves them grounded for quite a while. Chuck and Raleigh heal up quicker than their jaeger can be fixed, especially since once she’s in dry dock, a whole host of other issues crop up.

The kaiju change and adapt, and the jaegers have to do the same. A number of systems that should have been water-proof weren’t, and Gipsy’s lower half gets flayed open to fix the damage and upgrade the seals keeping salt water out of the electronics. When that’s done, they’ll be doing the same thing to the torso. After that, it’s decided, all of her armor will be replaced, upgraded to something they hope will be proof against kaiju guts.

After three kills, Gipsy was due for an overhaul anyway.

Chuck mournfully watches them take apart his girl from the other side of the bay, having been banished on the first day by PPDC engineers too high up the food chain to be terrorized by a teenage jaeger jockey. Raleigh slings an arm around his shoulders and watches with him.

The two of them have matching scars now, though Chuck’s are darker and took longer to heal. Raleigh keeps wanting to touch them, to soothe away the fading pain that still lingers. Medical has the procedures for treating circuit burns nailed down, but they can’t just erase them. Some things just take time.

Chuck leans into him and accepts the comfort.

*******

 

With Gipsy down for the long count, a third of Anchorage’s responsibility is shared among the other domes, and part of her crews are suddenly redundant. The unlucky are put on training or maintenance schedules. The three Beckets (“Don’t fucking _call_ me that, arsehole!”) are, miraculously, sent on leave.

For a _month._

_Together._

Tendo had cut Yancy loose on the principle that he didn’t need to watch him pining away for his roommates for a month. Yancy had pretended to be insulted, but he’d bolted for the door the second he could. Tendo didn’t tell him it was Medical’s request that the Beckets not be separated for that long.

Rangers are among the best-paid personnel in the PPDC. Additionally, LOCCENT crews are usually hired away from civilian tech companies, and are well-paid in consequence. Both groups spend most of their time in the Shatterdomes, because they’re constantly on call, which means they have nowhere and no time to spend much of it.

That means that the three of them have money in the bank, a whole month of leave ahead of them, and free access to military transport to almost anywhere in the world.

The argument starts almost the second they realize they have the same orders.

(It never once occurs to them to split up.)

“Somewhere hot.”

“A beach.”

“A beach nowhere near the fucking ocean.”

“We could go skiing.”

“Colorado?”

“France?”

“We could go skiing down the block, you morons. What part of ‘somewhere hot’ do you not understand?”

“Wear enough clothes and anywhere’s hot.”

“Only someone who’s spent their whole bloody life in Alaska could say that.”

It continues like that for an hour, but they’re anxious to be gone as soon as they can, so Raleigh spends most of the time on the computer, looking for places to go.

Sometime after midnight, Chuck pokes a finger at the monitor. “Hold up, what’s that?”

“Lake Tahoe? It’s up in the mountains, between, uh… California and Nevada.”

“Is it warm?”

Raleigh looks it up. “Not Australia-on-fire hot, but yeah, still pretty warm this time of year.”

“They have beaches, yeah?”

“And casinos,” Yancy adds, looking over his shoulder. Raleigh shoots him a look, but he just shrugs. “Why not?”

“There you go, then,” Chuck says.

“For a month?”

“We start out by getting drunk on a beach that’s not fucking blue, and go from there, yeah? “

They look at each other for a moment, waiting for the next snarky comment, the next objection, but there is none.

“Well, shit, then, let’s go see if we can find a flight!”

They do.

As of midnight, Rangers Becket, Becket, and Hansen are on vacation.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I couldn't find any descriptions of what Clawhook or the Guatemalan kaiju looked like, so I made up my own. Also, Lake Tahoe is awesome.


	6. In Which Chuck Hansen Sings the Blues

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Beckets and their adopted Hansen versus the World, featuring injustice, drunken revelations, involuntary snuggling, improbable kissing, unlikely scenarios, and the horror of Scott Hansen's sense of humor.

 

“I’m sorry, sirs, but we’re not allowed to serve either of you here,” the waitress says apologetically.  “You’re underage.”

Yancy ducks his head down, trying not to laugh, but damn, it’s hard.  The look on Chuck’s face is priceless, and if he wasn’t absolutely certain he’d get punched through a wall for it, he’d be taking pictures.  Raleigh looks more baffled than outraged.

“We’re old enough to drive a bloody jaeger, but not old enough to drink here,” Chuck says slowly, staring at her like he’s absolutely certain he didn’t hear her right.

“I’m sorry,” the waitress says, leaning closer, “but one of our bartenders is a huge Gipsy Danger fan, and according to the internet, neither of you are old enough.  It’s against the law in California to serve alcohol to anyone under 21.”

It’s their first afternoon on leave, and off to a roaring start.  

Raleigh has begun looking murderous by the time a woman at the next table suddenly leans over and slides a beer in front of Chuck.  “No worries,” she says. “We’ll look after you.”

They all glance at the waitress, who pointedly looks in the other direction with a smile.

“No reason for any of you boys to be buying your own,” a man from another close table says. “Get me three of whatever these boys are drinking.  I guess I’m thirstier than I thought.”

“Absolutely, sir.” The waitress is happy enough to take that as the solution, to the gratitude of everyone involved.  

Raleigh nods, his expression unwinding into something friendlier. Chuck, who’s never been _too young_ for anything before in his entire life, salutes his benefactor with a wink and tip of his glass, which he then drains before any of these insane seppos can take it away from him.

Yancy ends up thanking everyone graciously, because he’s the big brother.  He’s also the only one old enough to drink out in the real world, apparently, which is something they’d all managed to forget about.  Nobody is going to card a Ranger inside a Shatterdome, after all, and none of them had been anywhere else that was too particular about ID in a long time.  

Whoops.

Yancy drains his own beer and grins at his de-facto younger brothers.  Raleigh smiles back, flipping him off at the same time.  When the next round arrives, they clink their bottles together, because they actually did it: they’re on leave, they’re sitting in a bar in Lake Tahoe, the day is warm, and everything they can see outside is fucking beautiful.  They’re in the mountains, and there’s not a drop of Blue in that huge-ass lake out there, and they have an entire fucking _month_ of leave in front of them.

Actually, after everything, it turns out to be a pretty great day.

******* 

That evening, they’re in a restaurant near the beach, a place that had probably been a biker bar at one point, before the economy had picked up again.  There’d been a few years, the locals had told them, when the idea of that much water, a lake that deep, had scared off a lot of people.  Few of the refugees from Trespasser had stayed on, but then the government had come in and turned the tiny Lake Tahoe airport into a mostly self-contained military transport hub, flattening forests and lopping off a mountain top to do it. You couldn’t really see it from the shore, though, except for the dim glow of light from the south.  The cargo planes were a distant roar.  With the sudden population boom, the bar had come back to life and swallowed up the buildings next to it, until it was a big, rambling place with a full kitchen in the back and a bar and stage in the front.

As always, the locals knew the best places to go, and the three of them had been directed here by people who told them tales of authentic Mexican food.

It really is good, they agree.  Yancy’s not convinced that it’s all that authentic, but, fuck, he’s from Alaska; what does he know?  He takes a huge bite out of an empanada and moans a little at the taste.  Shatterdome crews eat better than anyone else in the military, but, Jesus Christ, he’s missed real food:  the kind that’s not part of a scientifically balanced diet, carefully controlled to keep everyone healthy.  The PPDC has a whole department devoted to that kind of shit, and Yancy thinks it’s slowly killing off his taste buds.

This is greasy and good, and he could stay here all night.  The owner here had recognized them too, but his response was to get them a somewhat private table in the back and pay for all their drinks, no IDs required. It’s fucking awesome, and Yancy drains his beer and belches happily, not bothering to duck the napkin Raleigh throws at him.

“Slob.”

“Am I offending young Charles’ delicate sensibilities?” Yancy asks, patting at the corner of his mouth with his own napkin.

“Fuck off, yeah?” Chuck manages between bites.  

“You’re just a pig,” Raleigh says amiably.  “No helping you.”

“I’m not the one who has to smell his clothes to know if he’s washed them this year.”

“Got a point there,” Chuck adds.  He holds his empty bottle up.  “Oi!  Can we get another here, love?” he yells at the waitress.  He winks, but he doesn’t really have to at this point; his dimples have already done the work for him.

Raleigh rolls his eyes.  “Aren’t you the one we had to physically throw into the shower last month?  Pretty sure it was, greasemonkey.”

“I’ve still got bruises, you fuckers,” Chuck growls, giving them the trademarked Hansen death glare.  He spoils it a moment later by grinning.  “Almost worth it for the look on that guy’s face, though.”

“He tried to have us written up for sexual harassment, you know,” Yancy says solemnly.  “Gotta make sure we shove you into an _empty_ stall next time.”

“Or maybe not use the public showers for it,” Raleigh adds, and he and Chuck grin almost identically.

Yancy wonders idly how drunk Chuck is at this point.  It doesn’t matter, really, but he’s curious.  Over the last couple of years he’s seen Chuck grow into a man – literally, considering that’s he’s got a couple of inches and about 20 pounds of pure muscle on Yancy now, the jerk.  He’s seen him at his best and at his worst, but he’s never seen him really drunk.  Even when they first met him, Chuck could hold his alcohol better than the rest of them – national heritage, he’d claimed.  They’ve been drinking pretty much all day today, though, in the way that only people who rarely ever get to stand down could do, and Yancy is pretty shitfaced himself.  Raleigh is a happy drunk, and right now he’s in love with the world, even though he probably can’t stand up straight enough to take a piss on his own.

But what about Chuck?  Hmmn.  Is he drunk enough for Yancy to start trying to talk him into trouble yet?  Raleigh has a hard-won immunity to his drunken charms, knowing that whatever brilliant idea Yancy has, it will end in tears.  And embarrassment.  Possibly in unfortunate tattoos.  And almost certainly in mortifying photos that will later turn up as blackmail items.  Yancy knows for a fact that’s he’s gonna get his ass kicked for it, but there’s got to be some terrible thing that he can convince Chuck to do.  It’s almost a moral imperative at this point.

Raleigh, damn their drift, catches on almost as soon as Yancy opens his mouth, and spoils it with a wave of protective disapproval that is so strong that Chuck catches some of it.  His head snaps up and he looks from one brother to the other.  When it’s clear that neither of them is going to say anything out loud, he snorts and reaches for another handful of tortilla chips.  This is his life now:  half the shit any of the three of them says is actually unspoken these days.  It doesn’t mean he always knows what the hell’s going on, but he doubts he misses anything important.

He doesn’t question it much anymore.  His dad and Uncle Scott had warned him what it meant, being a pilot, and what it would do to his head.  Once he’d decided he could live with it, that’s what he did.  It’s cozy enough, in its way.  Convenient.  Comfortable.  Yancy might be an arsehole, but he’s their arsehole, and that makes all the difference.

The arsehole in question throws his hands up in the air, clearly exasperated.  “Yer no fucking fun,” he slurs, and walks away in high dudgeon.  The effect is completely ruined by the fact that they can feel his genial mood through the drifts, and by the fact that he almost immediately runs into a pair of Jumphawk pilots he knows pretty well and is whisked off to their corner of the restaurant.

“Our social butterfly,” Raleigh says, and Chuck belches, possibly in agreement.  

Raleigh uses it as an excuse to slide a hand over to Chuck’s thigh and squeeze gently.  Chuck smirks and bats his eyelashes at him, because they’re drunk enough not to worry about justifying it to themselves later.

******** 

Helicopter pilots and jaeger pilots technically don’t have a lot in common except for the tendency to use all four limbs at once when driving their machines, but they always seem to get along.  Look at Herc Hansen if you want the ultimate example – he was a helicopter pilot and became a jaeger pilot, smooth as you please.

As Tendo’s second, Yancy spends a shitload of time coordinating air support, and he knows most of the military pilots running out of Anchorage and the north.  Some he’s never met in person, but he tries to have a beer with as many as he can.  For one thing, it gets him out of their quarters when the Terror Twins are in a mood, and for another, the more he knows about their jobs, the better he can do his.

Drunk as he is, and drunk as they are, the pilots’ table gets exponentially louder and bigger as time goes on, because that’s how it works.  It’s a constant cycle of more beer and more “No shit, there I was…” stories.  Yancy loses track of time for a while, until he feels something odd, a tugging from Raleigh’s direction, and he excuses himself, going back into the other room to find their table. Maybe it’s just the alcohol, because he’s not sure he’s ever felt anything like it before, but he’s stopped questioning this shit. 

As he make it back, he becomes aware of how loud the main room is, and that a lot of that noise is actually music. It’s a live band, he realizes as he reaches their table. Huh.  He hasn’t heard one of those in… he has no idea if he ever has, actually. Anyway, Chuck’s not at the table, but Raleigh doesn’t look unhappy, so Yancy raises an eyebrow at him.  Raleigh replies just as wordlessly, tilting his head to indicate the other side of the room.

And Chuck’s not at the table because Chuck is on the stage, wearing a loose tank top that does nothing to hide his perfect muscles, Raleigh’s ball cap, a pair of jeans, and no shoes.  Aside from the spike of lust that totally catches Yancy off-guard, there’s also the fact that _Chuck Hansen can sing_. 

Chuck Hansen can sing the blues, in fact, because he’s belting out _Texas Flood_ like he’s been doing it his whole life.  His voice is rough and his range isn’t huge, but then it’s not like he’s had lessons, has he?  _Has_ he?  It doesn’t matter, because his voice is perfect for the song anyway, and he can growl and reach for the top end and, honestly, it’s fucking outstanding.

God _damn._   

There’s a hand on his arm and he knows it’s Raleigh without looking, and his brother stands up, steadying him with an arm around his waist. Yancy’s grateful for it, to be honest.  Much of it’s the alcohol, he’s sure, but he feels kind of stunned as Chuck’s voice rolls over his nerve endings.

_ Well dark clouds are rollin’ in _

_ Man I’m standin’ out in the rain _

Somewhere down inside, muffled by every bit of misdirection and noise he can muster, Yancy allows himself to wonder, in the tiniest possible mental voice, if he’s in love.

He hears Raleigh laughing, and knows the little shit heard it anyway.

Fuck.

“He sings in the ConnPod,” Raleigh says, and his brother’s breath against his ear makes Yancy shudder.  “Whenever we’re in standby and can turn outgoing comms off.  He does it when he’s working on her, too.  A lot of the crew know, but who’s gonna tease him about it?”

Somehow the fact that Yancy hadn’t known all this before makes him blush, like Raleigh’s telling him intimate secrets or something.

“He sings in the shower, too, when you’re not around.”  Raleigh’s watching him like a hawk.

“Why then?” Yancy asks, wanting and not wanting an answer.

“How long have you guys been fighting now?  Don’t think he wants to hear about it from you.”

“I wouldn’t –“

“Don’t tell _me_ about it.”  Raleigh nods towards Chuck, who has stepped back from the mike for the guitarist to come up and solo.  The crowd is into it, though it’s not clear if anyone recognizes him.  His accent doesn’t carry over into the music much, but his dimples are practically trademarked by now.

Yancy sighs, wondering how to make Chuck know he doesn’t have to hide that without giving the kid a free shot at him.

“Wait, if he doesn’t even want me to know, why’s he up there in front of God and everybody?”

Raleigh laughs.  “Hell if I know.  Maybe it’s the miracle of alcohol, or maybe it’s because he’s Chuck fucking Hansen.”

“Better believe it,” Yancy giggles, and, shit, since when does he giggle?

Raleigh kisses his ear, missing his cheek, and hugs him tighter. Yancy wonders for a moment why this feels so natural, but the thought’s dashed right out of Yancy’s head when Chuck starts singing again.

_ Well, I’m leaving you, baby.  Lord, and I’m going back home to stay _ .

Chuck’s so goddamned earnest about everything he decides is worth his time.  When he overextends himself and has to quickly wrap a line up before he runs out of breath, he grins at the audience and they laugh with him.  He knows he’s not perfect, but he’s putting hard work into this, and that’s good enough for him.  It give him a grace and self-confidence that few people ever get to see.

No wonder the Beckets can’t look away.

To be honest, though, most of Raleigh’s attention isn’t on Chuck, though he happily watches him over his brother’s shoulder.  He’s behind Yancy now, holding him steady with both arms around his waist, and it feels good.  He made up a couple of inches on his brother right before they joined up, and it lets him rest his chin on Yancy’s shoulder now.  He’s drunk and he knows it – when he closes his eyes, he can feel the room moving around him – but he really likes this.  Yancy’s so warm that he can feel it through their shirts, and Raleigh likes all that solid muscle up against him.  It feels safe and intimate, like he can feel Yancy’s willpower through the strength of his body.

He’s always been amazed by his brother’s strength.  It had kept them from falling apart when their mom died and their dad’s mental health had gone with her.  It had kept them together when they were on their own in a cold, dark house, struggling to keep themselves fed.  It had gotten them through the worst of the Academy; unlike many candidates, including Chuck, they hadn’t lost anything personally to the kaiju, and the desire for three squares a day and the chance to do some good in the world hadn’t always been enough.  On top of all that, it was Yancy’s strength that had brought him back from his stroke and given them the life they had now.  If Yancy had quit after the stroke, if he’d left the PPDC instead of finding himself a new career, Raleigh knew he would have followed him, jaeger program be damned.  The specter of Yancy out there alone somewhere, still struggling against his disabilities, was still something that haunted Raleigh, surfacing in nightmares and sometimes in the drift.  Chuck always talked him through it, but he couldn’t quite banish it completely.  

Sleeping in the same bed as Yancy kept most of Raleigh’s fears at bay.  Standing here, holding him, even though they were both drunk as skunks?  It’s better than anything.  He can’t keep the happiness from spilling out of him and into the drift, and he feels Yancy shift, but his brother only turns to look at him, smiling, before settling back against him.

Together, they watch Chuck sing.

On the stage, Chuck catches their emotions and beams.  He belts out the last lines with everything he has, singing as if there’s no one in the room but the two Americans he likes to claim have ruined his entire life.

_ Baby, the sun shines every day. _

******* 

They spend a week soaking up sun and getting lost in the woods during the day, and drinking and gambling at night. Chuck doesn’t sing again, but blushes scarlet after Yancy smothers him with praise.  They run into the age problem with the casinos too, but have a better success rate at getting in anyway.  The floor manager at Harrah’s is from Juneau, as it turns out, and there’s no way she’s kicking the Beckets (all three) out of her casino.  She comps them, in fact, and they quickly lose a month’s salary for each of them.  Chuck, scarily smart as usual, reads up on blackjack over breakfast, watches the games that night, and then wins them all their money back and more the next day before he gets bored.  

“It’s all just math,” he says, waving off Raleigh’s amazement. “Let’s go get a drink, yeah?”

The Beckets exchange glances and just shake their heads.

They’re not really made for lazing around all day, not anymore, and it’s not long before it’s time to move on.  They’re gracious enough to inform PPDC Legal that any charges that might be brought against them are completely false, just in case.  They learned from the last time Chuck went on leave with his dad. Better safe than sorry.

Yancy wakes up on their last morning in Tahoe afraid that he’s going to burst into flames any second, despite the hotel’s arctic-level air conditioning.  He’s burning up, and when he tries to get up, he finds that he’s trapped between his brothers, although Chuck’s not really -- what the hell?

He’s squished up against Raleigh on one side, and the other furnace is Chuck, who’s curled up against Yancy on the other side.  Chuck apparently brought his covers over when he switched beds, because they’re on the bed as well.

Shit, no wonder Yancy’s hot.  He manages to get loose enough to sit up against the headboard, and he soaks up the cool air.  

He thinks about shoving Chuck off the bed, followed by his co-pilot, but it seems kind of harsh when he looks at them.  No matter that they reek of last night's beer, or that Raleigh’s snoring lightly, they’re kind of adorable like this, all snuggled up to him.  All he can see of Chuck is the spikey ginger mess of his hair, and one eyebrow, which makes him look like he’s smirking in his sleep.  Raleigh looks weirdly angelic, ruffled and sweet, with a tiny smile to match his co-pilot’s smirk.  They’re both completely out.

Yancy thinks he should be more freaked out by this.  Or at least mildly disturbed, really.

He can feel the drift humming faintly between them, a sleepy thing.

He’s not a stupid man, and despite their overwhelming tendency to let things go, he knows this is something they’re gonna have to talk about soon.  He’s so used to sleeping in the same bed as Raleigh that he doesn’t even think about it anymore, and apparently Chuck climbing into their bed with all his covers wasn’t worth waking up for.  Even now, with both of them pressed up against him, it wasn’t the closeness that woke him up.  As drunk as he was, he remembers exactly what it felt like to be wrapped in his brother’s arms the night Chuck sang, and there was nothing about it that wasn’t warm and good.  It’s the kind of memory that he’s got wrapped up and hidden away, to be taken out and peeked at later, when he really needs it.

He doesn’t understand his relationship with Raleigh all that much anymore.  A large part of what they are is the same as they’ve always been – brothers, close and devoted to each other in the way that only years of having no one but themselves to depend on could have made them.  He will always be Raleigh’s big brother.  He will always have his back.  Part of them is what the drift has left them: incapable of being apart for long, in sync with each other, tied into each other’s heads.   He doesn’t know what this new thing is, but he understands it down to his bones.  He needs to be able to touch his brother, to reassure himself that the blood still rushes under his skin, than his heart still beats. He wants to feel warmth.  It’s not sexual – right now it’s about knowing his brother is alive and with him – but it could be.  If he’s honest with himself, he knows it could be; not now, but later, as the ghost drift winds them tighter and tighter

He doesn’t think Raleigh would turn him away if it came to that.  He thinks he’d be welcomed with open arms.

And that’s the problem, isn’t it?

Because even if it’s wrong, they’re going to go ahead regardless, because Beckets are grand-masters of stubbornness, and above and beyond everything else, he doesn’t want to hurt Raleigh.  Ever.  He’d rather die.

If it’s right, he won’t give it up for anything in the world.

Of course, there’s always the possibility that he’s completely full of shit and is reading all of this wrong.  And he’s pretty sure that fucking this up would be the worst thing he could ever do.

That leaves him with the Chuck problem, and he wishes he was on firmer ground here, because he may have a thing for Chuck, but he’s really got nothing solid from Chuck on whether it goes the other way or not.  Chuck is as flirty, in his way, as he is a pain in the ass, and the way he fits with the brothers is almost scary.  Sure they fight, but that’s just part of how well the three of them have meshed together.  It works, and it’s comfortable as hell, but that doesn’t mean Chuck wants _him_ , does it?

And what if Chuck wants Raleigh, but not him?

That’s how it _should_ go, if it’s going to go any way at all.

He just doesn’t think that’s how it _will_ go.

Whatever this is, he has feelings for his little brother and the man who might as well be his even littler brother.  As uncertain as he is about everything else, he’s sure about what he feels.  How fucked up is his life that he’s got it so bad for two men at the same time?  _These_ two men?

And wasn’t he straight?  What happened to that?  He’s pretty sure he was into women when he was still in the Academy, and it’s not like that was so long ago.  He still has an eye for them, certainly.  There’s been a lot of pretty women around them this week, and he’s appreciated the view.  It’s just that he doesn’t want to spend time with anyone but Chuck and Raleigh.  All of them have had opportunities to hook up this week, and none of them have.  Even on vacation they stick with each other.

It feels like they are a unit drawing slowly together, made to interlock with each other.

Maybe it’s the drift.  Probably it’s the drift.

But that doesn’t mean he doesn’t feel it, or that it isn’t true.

He just doesn’t know what to do about it.  He feels like he should be horrified, or upset, or disgusted, or something, but instead he’s comfortable, and content, and happy.

With a sigh, he settles himself in bed, stealing Chuck’s extra pillow and propping himself up so that less of him is under the covers.  He might as well go back to sleep, if he can.  It’s barely past dawn, and nothing is going to be solved right now.

As he drifts off, Yancy wonders if he’s the only one who worries about these things.  Maybe it’s just his job.

Chuck feels him slide back into sleep as much from the way his body relaxes as from the drift.  He hasn’t moved since Yancy woke up, out of fear that he’d get kicked out of bed.  He’s not entirely sure why he’s there anyway, though he remembers waking up feeling cold.  He feels kind of stupid about it, but not enough to go back to his own bed now that Yancy’s comfortable again.

He likes it here.

They barely fit and if Raleigh rolls over he’s gonna fall off, and Yancy snores, and Chuck’s feet are tangled up in the sheets just the way he hates, but it’s all good.  

Even though that arsehole stole his other pillow.

To be honest, Chuck doesn’t know what he’s doing here, or why it’s not bothering him to be snuggling up to these men. He’s got a thing for these two, sure, but he doesn’t think he’s gay.  He still appreciates women, and he’s never had wet dreams about any other blokes, so he thinks he’s just got a thing for Beckets.  That’d make him _Becketsexual_ , as Yancy would say, his eyes glowing with the satisfaction of finding something new to tease Chuck about for the rest of his life.  That’s gotta come from the drift, yeah?  There’s no reason he should even be ghosting with Yancy, but he does, and he knows what drifting does to people.

Even to Dad and Uncle Scott, although he’s not 100% sure if he’s right about what he heard that night.  

After their many and various speeches to him about what being a pilot can mean, he was wondering if he’d feel an attraction to Raleigh when they were first paired up.  Seeing him in the shower first certainly hadn’t done a thing to nip that idea in the bud.

He doesn’t jerk off to thoughts of his co-pilot naked, but that’s only because he doesn’t want Raleigh to find out about it later, when they’re about to go off and kill something.  It wouldn’t be fair to have that out there for the man to trip over when they drift. 

But, fuck.  Raleigh was fucking perfect.  How could he not lust after that?  Their heads fit so well together that it was hard not imagine that their bodies would too.

If his dreams were any guide, they’d be perfect together.

Which left Yancy, who was also twisted up in this, who’d also starred in his dreams, and who he was far less certain of.  Yancy, who was handsome and had perfect blue eyes and a sarcastic wit that could char paint off a wall.  Yancy, who never once failed to take him on when Chuck was looking for a fight, and never failed to have his back when he needed him.  Goddamned Yancy.

It felt like the Beckets were a package deal, but he might be wrong about that, and if he was, what were they going to think of him?  If he had a shot, he’d take it, but he had no idea if he had a shot, though he was increasingly sure he wanted one.  The way they’d watched him when he was singing…  Fucking Christ.

He’s seventeen, going on 48, and he’s seen and done more shit already than most men do in their lives.  That doesn’t mean he has a fucking clue what to do about the hot blondes in his life.  There are some things that being a badass jaeger pilot just isn’t much help with.

Not fucking fair, if you ask him.  Chuck yawns like a hyena, showing his teeth, and burrows back into Yancy’s side.  It’s too early for this.

On the far side of the bed, Raleigh rolls his eyes as he feels his co-pilot finally drift off.  What a pair of morons, he thinks fondly.  He’s already seen where this is going, and although he’s not going to push them, he can’t wait.  He made his peace with it while Chuck and Yancy were still circling around each other like lions trying to figure out their place in the pride, and that thought almost makes him laugh, because, seriously, is he comparing those two assholes to lions now?  

Whatever.

He loves them both.  It feels like he always has.  Holding Yancy close and whispering in his ear, kissing his cheek, had seemed as natural as breathing, and it was only more fuel for his basic argument in all this:  the heart wants what it wants.  It’s not poetry, and no one’s ever going to be quoting him on it, but it works.  Yancy’s been his everything for so long, and then they drifted, countless hours in the simulators, and they couldn’t even cut Yancy out of him now if they tried.  The fact that they’re still ghosting doesn’t surprise him at all, because of _course_ Yancy’s in his head, and he always will be.

Chuck is like that too, though he’d resent the comparison, loudly.  They are both so damned devoted, so constant, that Raleigh wonders how he ever lived without both of them there, in his head.  It means everything to him.  It soothes over old scars, defuses his unhealthy rage at the past, and fills up the empty places in his heart.  He wants to be together with both of them, and fuck what anyone else might have to say about it.  He’s not going to push it because he doesn’t have to.  All they need is time.

Yet they’re still fretting over it all, figuring it all out, and worrying about hurting him or each other.  Idiots.

Raleigh falls asleep with a smile on his face.

******* 

Stop two on the Becket (“Don’t bloody call me that!”) world tour is the Sydney Shatterdome, because of course it is.  Chuck has family to visit, and that’s something neither Becket will take for granted, especially not in the middle of a war.  

Returning to Australia for the first time since he got his Ranger wings, Chuck strides across the tarmac, all swaggering pilot and proud son, to where his father and uncle are standing, and there’s an awkward moment where Herc and Chuck just stare at each other, and then Scott throws his arms around their necks and the whole thing devolves into a knot of hugs and laughter and crude jokes.

The Beckets stand back, smiling but not intruding, but that only lasts until Scott notices, at which point they are dragged bodily into the whole thing.  Yancy tries to hang back a little, because he’s not anybody’s co-pilot, and that seems to be one of the bonds of kinship here, but Herc’s not having that.  

“Don’t think for a second you’re getting out of this,” he growls, throwing an arm around Yancy’s shoulders and hauling him in.

Yancy has always been under the impression that Australian men were sort of stand-offish, but apparently he’d been mistaken.  

Chuck escapes his uncle’s headlock and beams at the brothers Becket, his hair standing up in every direction, and Yancy does take a picture of that, because he’s pretty sure there’s room enough for him to escape from Chuck’s wrath here.

He’s right, but only by a hair.

Herc and Scott have just come off their active duty cycle, so that leaves them with four days of being off-duty.  The dome is fully up to speed at the moment, with everything ready to go, and the brothers manage to wrangle a couple of days of leave on top of that.  That means that the notorious Hansen brothers will be their guides to the entire continent for a week.  Australia may be doomed, but it sounds like a damned fine idea to the five of them.

They report in, making sure the Marshal knows they’re here, and then spend what seems like hours in the mess hall and the pilot’s lounge, shooting the shit with Scott, Herc, and everyone else who stops by.  There’s a shitload of people in the Sydney dome at the moment, and they all seem to want to come by and say hello.  The jaeger corps is a fairly small community still, and you run into the same people pretty often.

Herc practically welds himself to Chuck’s side.  It’s obvious that he can handle Chuck better now that his son is grown up and shares so much in common with him; Chuck’s no longer the mystery he was to Herc, and the distance between Sydney and Anchorage has contrarily pushed them closer together.  Chuck doesn’t seem to really mind the attention now, to Raleigh’s amusement.  He’ll bitch and moan about it later, but he puts no space at all between himself and his dad, physically or otherwise.

Chuck sits between his co-pilot and his dad, with Yancy and Scott on the other side of the table, and he’s so obviously at home that it kind of hurts Yancy’s heart to watch him.  Sometimes it’s easy to forget that Chuck has lived half his life in places like this, preparing for the war he’s fighting now.  Yancy and his brother have a store of memories of what life was like before the war, before their mother died, before they were abandoned.  They had roots in something beyond this.  Chuck barely remembers his mum now, and his only remaining family are the two men here now, who put their lives on the line just like he does.

He doesn’t let himself think, even for a second, about any of them dying.  Even so, the risk weighs heavily on them, all the time.

Scott tells them all the dirtiest joke Yancy’s ever heard in his life, completely derailing his train of thought, and he’s grateful for it, even though he feels obligated to shove the filthy bastard off his chair, leaving him sprawled on his ass on the floor, crying with laugher.

******* 

The three of them get assigned to transient family pilot housing, which means they get a room with a queen-size bed and a bunk bed.  How the hell the Shed rates queen-size beds for anybody, ever, is a mystery they’re too tired to solve.  Yancy considers taking the top bunk, just for variety’s sake, but the scowl on Raleigh’s face stops that idea cold.  Yancy hasn’t been on medication for a long time now, and the migraines are very few and far between, but he gets the lecture anyway, and wonders who the kid’s giving the excuse to.  He really has no problem with sleeping in the bigger bed.

As long as he doesn’t have to explain their sleeping arrangements to anybody, he’s fine.

In fact, he’s out like a light almost as soon as his head hits the pillow.  Fuck sleeping on airplanes.

*******  

Yancy doesn’t know what wakes him up later.  Maybe somebody made a sound, or maybe it’s just the noisy brains he lives with.  He doesn’t think he makes a sound himself, though, because the two men he sees quietly, passionately kissing on the other side of the narrow room don’t stop.

The only light in the room is coming from the LEDs that illuminate the light switches and the various power buttons around the room, but Yancy has no trouble seeing his brother being pressed up against the wall by his co-pilot.  Raleigh has no shirt on and Chuck is only wearing a pair of briefs, and they are fucking beautiful together.  It doesn’t look – or feel – like they’ve done this too much before, and it must be a new thing for them.  Their kisses are tender and slow.  He can almost feel the soft press of lips, and the hot flick of a tongue as Raleigh teases Chuck into opening up for him.

Yancy realizes with a slow rush of heat that Chuck’s a virgin.  Raleigh is giving him his first kiss, and Yancy can feel the lust and joy and trepidation that’s making the ginger’s heart hammer in his chest.

He wonders if he should be jealous.  He wonders which one he’d be jealous of.  Instead of that, he’s content; he’s sleepily floating on their happiness, and he doesn’t really want to do much of anything but watch them, and feel.

Everything’s right. Chuck and Raleigh _should_ be kissing, should be holding each other like that, and should be breathing the same air, the ghost drift so strong between them that it encompasses Yancy without a ripple.  Of _course_ they are together, because they have always been together, and the way Chuck sighs as Raleigh licks his way into his mouth again only makes it clearer.

Raleigh looks up and his eyes meet his brother’s, and the drift seems to spread even further, eroding the boundaries between them.  Chuck sighs and leans into Raleigh, turning so that he too can see Yancy, and all of Yancy’s affections for them both seem to spill out into this space they share between them.  Raleigh’s feelings surge forward to meet him, a tangle of love and possessiveness and a fierce desire for the connection they all three are sharing.  Chuck smiles and lets himself go, and Yancy laughs, but it’s only surprise and they all know it:  Chuck’s feelings for them are a tangle of friendship and love and frustration and a healthy amount of lust which echoes between the three of them, backed by his fear of being alone, always the extra, the one who doesn’t fit with the brothers Becket.

“Come here,” Yancy whispers, and it’s awkward, but they obey him, coming to sit together with him on the big bed, watching each other.  It’s the strangest thing, the lightness which makes him feel like he’s lost touch with the world, and the heavy warmth of Raleigh’s hand on his shoulder and Chuck’s on his thigh.  They touch each other like that, with open hands on bare skin, and it’s like a circuit being completed between the three of them.  Yancy leans over and kisses Chuck’s mouth gently, and the man grins before kissing him back.  It’s a brief thing, but it settles something between them, gives permission for a future, and Chuck shares it with Raleigh in the same way, watching the way Raleigh’s face lights up.

And that should be it, but it’s not.  Without hesitation, Raleigh ducks his head in and kisses his brother, completing that circuit too. Yancy is both shocked and utterly unsurprised at the same time, and he opens his mouth to kiss him back without another thought.  The brush of his tongue against Raleigh’s is transcendent, and simple, and pure, and there is no shame and no regret.

They are lightheaded now, lost in the connections between them, and their touches are simple, not seductive.  Any touch is perfection.  The three of them kiss and kiss again, each in turn.  Everything seems to echo between them, every touch and every feeling encompassing them all.  Yancy watches Chuck kiss his brother, nipping at his lower lip, and he can feel it with his own mouth.

They don’t take it any further.  It’s too much as it is, and they’re only touching with hands and mouths.  

Raleigh kisses Yancy the same way he kisses Chuck, like a lover and a friend and a brother.  He wants to push his brother down and kiss the doubt and fear out of him, but none of them are ready for that, and he smiles at Yancy, trying to push all his love through the drift at him, even as Chuck wraps his arms around his neck and kisses the breath out of him.

Yancy joins him in kissing Chuck right back.

In the morning, they wake to find themselves still together, back in their own heads but tangled up in each other, cuddled together.  Yancy has Raleigh sprawled across one side of him, and Chuck has managed to be in contact with as much of both of them as he possibly can.

There’s still about an hour until they have to get up, and it’s already pretty clear that there’s going to be a price to pay if they don’t move soon – Yancy’s not sure if he’s still asleep or if he really can’t feel his legs – but no one wants to give up the contact.  It’s different this time.  

None of the excuses, valid or otherwise, that they’ve had over the last couple of years make any difference now.  They’re in one bed, and they’ve been kissing, and the slide of warm skin as they stretch now is pure pleasure.  And it’s okay.  This morning, at least, everything is okay.  They don’t talk before they settle back into sleep, but the drift glows softly between them.

None of them is really surprised when they over-sleep and are late to breakfast.

******* 

It impresses Yancy that the Hansens are friendly with so many people, given the wide variance in their social skills.  People kept appearing out of nowhere to congratulate Chuck on getting his jaeger and on Gipsy’s kill count, and he seemed to know all of them.  The ones he didn’t got quick introductions from his dad and a solid handshake, which is the most sociable Yancy’s ever seen Chuck be. It looks like their little boy is growing up. 

Chuck kicks him under the table, and Raleigh grins.

The senior Hansens have plans for them, apparently, involving beaches and drinking and seeing places that have an amazing number of syllables in them.  They seem to know people all across the continent too, from the number of mates they have who will hook them up this week.  Or at least that’s what the Beckets get out of the conversation, which is mostly between Scott and Herc on one side of the table and Chuck on the other, where he’s sandwiched between Raleigh and Yancy.

Australia’s wonders, natural and unnatural, are described in detail.  Enthusiastic, overly-descriptive detail

Yancy’s distracted enough by the thigh pressed up against his own that it takes him a while to realize that the Hansens are fucking with them; to start with, nobody in the history of Australia has ever sounded that Australian, drawing out every possible vowel and using made-up slang.  Chuck threw himself right into it, while the Beckets tried to be polite.  It went on for a while, until they tried to convince the Americans that ‘shaving the whale’ was traditional Australian for having a hangover.

“You fuckers,” Raleigh says, throwing a sausage at them as they break up into laughter.  

“Oi, that’s my cultural heritage you’re laughing at,” Chuck says, scowling theatrically, until Yancy reaches over and pinches him underneath the table.  Chuck lurches away with a curse, colliding with Raleigh and spilling his own drink in the process.  That sets their elders off again, and this time Chuck isn’t able to hold it in, laughing with the rest of them.

It’s been a good morning.

The ghost drift hasn’t come back anywhere near as strong as it was last night, but all three of them are still feeling it, like a low current under their skins.  None of them has said a word about it, but nothing feels awkward or wrong between them.  Whatever this is, it’s warm and gentle, and Yancy already knows he isn’t going to be able to live without it.  

It’s terrifying at the same time as it’s comforting, and he knows he’s not alone; he saw the giddy look in Raleigh’s eyes this morning when they finally got up, and he’s pretty sure he can feel it from him right now.  Or maybe that’s Chuck.

God, they are so screwed up.

*******

The five of them are almost out of the mess hall, when they’re smoothly intercepted by what can only be PPDC PR, clean and well-scrubbed and in spotless uniforms.  

“Gentlemen!” a woman calls, quite unnecessarily.  She has dazzling, perfect teeth, and equally unnatural hair, and Chuck practically hisses in response.  All five of them have a sinking feeling in their stomachs that has nothing to do with military food.

“Something we can do for you?” Herc asks, his tone glacially polite.

As it turns out, there is.

The PPDC couldn’t ignore the opportunity presented by all the Hansen-Beckets being in one place at one time, so a little photo-op had been arranged. 

“Just an hour,” the PR officer assures them.  “We’ve already got them lined up for you.”

“We don’t have our dress uniforms with us,” Yancy throws out there, in the faint hope that it will make any difference at all.

“Not to worry!  We’ve got you covered,” she reassures them.

Fuck.

The one hour shoot turns into three, of course, and ‘covered’ mostly means putting them in spotless work uniforms without the blouses, so that the t-shirts can show off their physiques.  Technically it’s a uniform violation, but PR has had them in swimsuits before, so they’re getting off easy this time.  Yancy spends more time in the gym than the rest of them, so he’s actually more cut than the pilots, and the photogs are more than happy to put him in the middle of both sets of pilots, usually with crossed arms and a smirk.  He’s taken variations of the same photo with Chuck and Rals about a dozen times.  They’re all used to the routine by now.  

It’s better than press interviews.  They get arranged in various poses, arms around shoulders, arms crossed, laughing, looking fiercely determined, in pairs and trios and solo and all together.  It’s boring, but it’s part of the job.  The PPDC has invested a lot of time and money in making its people into heroes.

Things are wrapping up when there’s another request.  “Now, can we get one with just the Rangers?”

The room falls overwhelmingly silent. Chuck and Raleigh scowl identically, each of them shifting unconsciously, protectively towards Yancy.  He knows he’s the one being cut out again, but he’ll be damned if he moves.  It still hurts, but they’ve gone through this before, and he’s not doing it again.  Everybody should have gotten the goddamned memo by now.

Except for this guy, apparently.

“Yeah, nah,” Herc says, drawing the last syllable out scornfully.

You can almost see the foreign photographers trying to translate that bit of Australian.  The locals and the regulars, the ones more familiar with jaeger pilots, don’t say a word.  A space opens up around the man who’d wanted Yancy out.

“We’re all Rangers here, mate,” Chuck adds, crossing his arms and stepping in front of Yancy, as if shielding him. 

The photographer who asked doubles down, despite Chuck looming over him.  “I really think that –“

“And I really don’t give a shit,” Chuck cuts him off.  “I’m done.”

Raleigh’s already moving, with the Hansen brothers not far behind.  Yancy takes a moment to say goodbye to one of the press, a photographer he knows from Anchorage, who he’s sat for several times and gotten drunk with at least once.  She smiles and shrugs apologetically, gripping his hand.  Raleigh slings an arm around his shoulders, and Chuck waits at the door for them, one hand held out to usher them through.

Yancy can’t stop himself from grinning.  A chunk of that might be bravado, but most of it comes from the warmth in his belly.  He doesn't exchange a bemused look with Raleigh, but then, he doesn't have to. Chuck, catching some of it, blushes and refuses to look either of them in the eye.

There are complaints, of course, as soon as he leaves the room.  The PR officer in charge listens to them all, and then smiles brightly.  

“I’m afraid there’s been a misunderstanding,” she says cheerfully.  “It was my job to get them here so that you could have this opportunity.  It was your job not to piss them off.”

The smile becomes blinding.

“Now, are there any more questions?”

******* 

The Hansens are idiots, Yancy decides, feeling fond.  He doesn’t know what he expected from this little trip, but sprawling in a camp chair while watching Scott try to teach Gypsy Danger’s crack pilot team how to surf wasn’t it.  There’s beer, though, and, well, he did expect that part, so he’s pretty okay with things.

“I think he’s actively trying to drown them now,” he says, squinting against the sun as he watches Chuck ride a gentle swell for about 10 seconds before vanishing as he falls off.  Raleigh is swimming after his own board, and Scott’s sitting on his, laughing his ass off.

“Made him promise,” Herc says, digging in one of their coolers for another beer. “No permanent physical injuries.”

“That’s comforting,” Yancy replies, burying his toes in the sand.  “You get to explain to Pentecost why I’m bringing them back in boxes.”

Herc snorts and hands him a cold one, which, all things considered, seems like a fair enough answer.

It’s a beautiful day.

They’re south of Sydney by a good stretch, and the ocean here is stunning.  The bay is naturally protected from the north, and the mouth of the bay is blocked off by a permanent system of nets and buoys to keep it free of the wreckage and kaiju muck that still turns up on Australian beaches.  The sand is a blinding white, the water is an unbelievable turquoise, and they’re camping here in the woods for a night or three, whatever seems like the better idea.

There’s almost no one else here, Scissure and a nuclear weapon having done terrible things to the popularity of New South Wales’ beaches.  

It’s so perfect that it’s almost unreal.

A perfect time for a nap, actually.  It’s still warm here, and he and Herc, at least, are in the shade, and unlikely to broil, unlike the three morons out there, who’ll still end up with massive sunburns even if they escape the invisible jellyfish of death, or whatever the hell else is waiting for them out there.  Yancy likes to tell Chuck that Australia isn’t actually fit for human habitation, and even though he’s bullshitting to rile him up, he’s not, in the deepest part of his heart, 100% sure that he’s going to make it through this trip without something trying to murder him.

He’s never been all that fond of the ocean anyway, truth be told.

Herc’s next comment completely blindsides him.

“So, which of you is fucking my son?”

It’s asked so casually that it takes a good twenty seconds before Yancy realizes what he said, and he takes another few to be grateful that he didn’t have a mouthful of beer at the time.  He’s pretty sure that the only way to answer that is to take it head-on.  Don’t show the predator any fear, and all that.

“Neither one of us.”

Goddamn, Herc Hansen has unnaturally blue eyes.

“You sure about that?”

“I’m pretty sure I would’ve noticed, sir,” he says, and takes a drink, not letting himself look away.

“Then explain what’s going on.”

“Other than Raleigh trying to strangle him right now?”

It doesn’t work – neither one of them looks away. 

“Nah,” Herc says, smirking at him, “See, I know how it works.  Been piloting long enough to know what the drift does to a couple of blokes like them.  But then there’s you. I see how he acts around you.  I watched him jump to your defense when, last I heard, you two spend all your free time fighting. The lot of you act like you’ve been drifting with each other for years now.”

And Yancy has no idea what to say to that, because it’s true and it’s not true, and he doesn’t know how to explain it.  Doesn’t know if he wants to explain it.

He’s kissed his brother.  He kisses his brother good night and good morning now, and it’s slow and it’s filthy, and the only thing that comes anywhere near to being as good as kissing Raleigh is kissing Chuck.

Yancy is in love, and he wants to say it out loud, but he doesn’t want to hear Herc’s condemnation of the best things in his life.

Because kissing Chuck is one thing.  Kissing his brother is incest and wrong and terrible in every possible way.

Isn’t it?

He really doesn’t want to hear it.

If he ever had to give up Raleigh, it would break him.  And there’s no way he’s giving up Chuck.  He’s just not.

Herc sighs and looks down, watching himself pick at the label on his bottle with his thumbnails.  When he meets Yancy’s eyes again, he looks both a little sad and a little fierce.

“Kissed m’ brother for the first time after our third kill,” he says unflinchingly.  “It’s gone along from there.”

Yancy’s stunned… and not surprised at all.

“Does Chuck know?”

It’s the first thing out of his mouth, but it feels stupid, and he blushes a little when he asks it.

“Nah.  Nobody really wants to think about their parents fucking, do they?  None of his business.”

Considering the way Chuck’s eyes go dark and his breathing speeds up every time the Beckets kiss, Yancy doesn’t think it would bother Chuck too much on moral grounds.  Just a question of who’s doing the kissing.

He realizes he’s grinning, and Herc’s smiling too.  He’s managed to find one of the few people on earth who’d understand, and it feels good, like he’s been holding in the biggest, best secret of his life, and he can share it now.

He doesn’t, because their secrets aren’t just his to keep, but it’s good enough to know that he could, if he needed to. 

“One last question, yeah?  All this aside, what exactly are your intentions regarding my son?”

Jesus fucking Christ.  Herc’s expression went from friendly to psycho killer in a split second, and if Yancy had ever doubted that Herc’s papa bear instincts were still intact, he knew better now.

“I, uh, don’t know?” Yancy said, and from the darkening of Herc’s expression, that was woefully, completely the wrong answer.  “I mean, he’s my brother’s co-pilot, and there’s no way either of us would ever hurt him even if he wasn’t.  But there’s no plan, because how do you plan for this?  All I know is that if there’s any way, anything I can do to keep them both safe, I’ll do it.”

As he spoke, Yancy own eyes’ narrowed, because what the fuck was Herc implying here?  That he and Raleigh would ever do something to hurt Chuck?  Really?

The stare-down lasts about thirty seconds before Herc nods and that whiplash smile returns.  It reaches well up into his eyes this time, so Yancy thinks about letting his guard back down.

“So you all sleep in the same room, you practically live out of each other’s pockets, you finish each other’s sentences, and nobody is fucking.  Good luck with that.”

Yancy just snorts and shakes his head, because he’s not going to go into any more detail.  It’s not Herc’s business, not really, and he can already feel Raleigh’s curiosity from here.  He really doesn’t want to tell him and Chuck about how he spent the afternoon telling Chuck’s dad about their lack of sexual history together.

Herc, bless him, doesn’t push it.

******* 

Australia is pretty amazing, really, or at least what they see of it is.  The Hansens (and Chuck insists on calling them all that, since Hansens outnumber Beckets on this trip) meander along the southern coast, mostly camping where they can to avoid drawing attention to themselves, surfing, and spending a day drinking outstanding wine at a vineyard they ran into by accident.  They argue most of the way, but it’s full of laughter too, and the Beckets recognize the tone immediately from their own family road trips as kids.

Scott said they looked like a bunch of bogans on holiday, drinking cheap beer and driving an expensive vehicle.  Chuck took offense at the term, Herc took both sides of the argument depending on who needed the help, and no one would explain it to the Beckets, who were frankly afraid to ask anyone else.

It was a goddamned good week.

Despite the Giant Fucking Spider Incident.

The younger men had been sharing a tent, piling up air mattresses and zipped-together sleeping bags to make a comfortably warm sort of nest.  If they’d been with anyone else, they would’ve done it differently, but Herc and Scott were unlikely to say anything, not when they were sharing on this trip too.

Scott stumbled out of his tent that morning for an early-morning piss, and had found the Spider on his way back.  It wasn’t moving, so he’d thought it was dead.  Blearily seeing an opportunity for some fun, he’d scooped it up on a plate and tossed it in the other pilots’ tent.  Through sheer luck, or the lack thereof, the Spider had landed with a solid thump on Yancy’s bare chest, waking him up in time to see the enormous goddamned thing miraculously revive and go skittering down into their sleeping bags, looking for shelter.

By the time the screaming stopped, Herc and Scott were in tears from laughter, Chuck had a black eye from somebody’s elbow or knee, and Raleigh, half-asleep and not at all clear on what was going on, had vaulted out of the tent in full combat mode, wearing only boots and boxer shorts.  

In the end, the only permanent casualty was the Spider, which, alas, did not survive being stuffed down the back of Scott’s pants.   Herc, not having been involved in any way for once, nearly laughed himself to death, but was saved by a last-minute fit of horror when he found that Scott had been wearing his pants by mistake.

*******

The kissing hasn’t gone any further.  There isn’t any hurry, and tents are in no way sound-proof.

The kissing hadn’t _stopped_ , either.

Chuck dreams of holding Raleigh’s shaking body in his arms the morning they find their father has abandoned them, his little brother too pale, too shocked to cry.

Raleigh does dream of crying, strapped securely into a seat that’s still too big for him, watching the tears roll down his father’s face even as his concentration never wavers, set on getting them out of Sydney as fast as possible.  

Yancy dreams of Spiders, but after the other two calm him down and soothe him to sleep again, he dreams of drifting, with Raleigh, and with Chuck, until it all blurs into something warm and safe and as limitless as the sky.

******* 

When the time comes, Chuck holds on to his father and his uncle for a long time before he can let them go.  Raleigh hugs each of the older Hansens in turn, while Yancy give Herc a quick hug and then assures Scott that there absolutely _are_ hard feelings and that he’ll personally feed Scott to rabid bears if he ever sets foot in Alaska.

Herc’s laughter follows them out the door.

 


End file.
